Category: Tournament Report

  • GP Montreal Postmortem

    pt I – escape from montreal: a text adventure

    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. There are several
    blocked-off escalators heading down, various exits, some fast-food restaurants in
    English and French, and an advertisement that incorporates the map of the country
    in the sign (and while the novelty of being in a foreign country has mostly worn
    off at this late juncture in the trip, seeing a slightly smile-shaped archipelago
    instead of the USA used in such promotional capacity is a bit odd for the few seconds
    it takes to consider the normalcy and obviousness of the sign). What do you do?

    > check inventory

    You have a wallet, a train ticket, a phone, an iPod Touch, and a soft cloth suitcase
    with a bunch of overstuffed zipper pockets, a faux-leather handle, and a clip for
    the shoulder strap that you really wish you’d taken the time to find before
    leaving. The bag feels a bit lighter now than it did on the way into the city, despite
    the addition of two mediocre Sealed pools, but tell that to your bright-pink hands
    that’ve had to carry the thing around from hostel to street to metro car to
    staircase to the actual metro car you were supposed to be on in the first place
    to escalator to train station.

    > check train ticket

    AMTRAK – 69

    MTR -> PGH

    9:30AM

    $62

    > check time

    I don’t see a ‘time.’

    > check phone

    Fat lot of good that’ll do you, the flippo’s down to a flashbar having
    been “looking for service” the entire time it’s been in this country.
    There’s some useless and expensive pseudo-internet thing, a pitifully short
    contact list including the parent you’re currently on speaking terms with,
    the one you’re not, and that girl from the bar friday because you’re
    dumb enough to get contact information from someone despite not having an actual
    way to contact them. Phone also says 9:35AM, whatever that means.

    > where is amtrak ticket counter

    Over thataway.

    > go thataway

    You’re at the Amtrak ticket counter. There’s a French Canadian gentleman
    that looks like the real-life inspiration for De Niro’s character in Meet
    the Parents. You go up to the counter and (see how easy I’m making this for
    you? I’m such an accommodating game, not making you type all those detailed
    commands to accomplish simple tasks) show him the ticket, asking if the train has
    left already (oui), then if there’s another one today (non).

    > reason with

    He’s French.

    > make puppydog face

    Nothing doing. What are you trying to accomplish here, anyway? There isn’t
    even another train today, like I already told you. Sheesh.

    > ask for refund

    He refunds the ticket to your bank account (it’ll be processed in about
    two days and have five or six dollars subtracted from the initial cost), and smiles
    at you and advises to try the bus station, giving explicit and easily-understood
    directions to it, after looking up the schedule for Greyhound busses (his company’s
    competitor, might I add) at your request. And you thought he’d be a jerk!
    Ha ha. I can’t actually feel emotion, but if I did it would probably be mild
    bemusement at you. Let’s move on.

    > go to bus station

    You’re at the bus station. Technically, you were supposed to give a bunch
    of detailed commands about opening doors, spending your last six dollars going back
    and forth on the metro before realizing it was in walking distance (since you weren’t
    listening to the kindly French Canadian gentleman), but I really feel like we’re
    developing a bond here. We’ll make it through this, you and I.

    > buy ticket

    Hokay, wooo, well, I know we were getting along really well, but this is moving
    a bit too fast for my taste. I’d prefer if we’d slow it down a little,
    here, I’m getting uncomfortable. I have a reputation. I’m respectable.
    I have dignity. This is my job, my livelihood as a fictional text-based adventure
    game we’re talking about here. So yeah, well, how about you try waiting in
    line first while I recoup for a second.

    > wait in line

    Thank you. You’re a good person, despite everything that’s happened.
    Not all of it was your fault. You wait in line. Doo de doo. Now you can go up to
    the counter and buy a ticket.

    > go up to the counter and buy a ticket

    Well, you go up the counter and attempt to buy a ticket, but your debit card gets
    declined and I’m not really the world’s foremost financial detective
    here, but I’m going to guess that fits roughly in the column of “things
    you don’t want to happen.” I’m sorry. Not like, sorry that I did
    anything wrong, because let’s face facts it was 100% your doing, whether you
    remember causing it or not, but I’m sorry that it had to happen to an on-balance
    alright guy.

    > check wallet

    You reach into your wallet and calmly try to slide out that crisp hundred, making
    your most Stringer Bell-esque expression, only to find three $1 bills. Oh, wow.
    What in heaven happened there? That’s just… well you’ll probably want
    to get around to finding that thing. It WAS right there, though, you saw it in there
    on Friday evening, and you certainly don’t remember spending or breaking it
    any time since then. You duck your head so you stand, like, 6’2” tall,
    and walk off glumly. That’s not a biased description. I’m sure you could
    ask a lot of people how you walked off and a large number would say “glumly,”
    so that’s as close to objective as we can get here. I’m not trying to
    be mean. Even your most adverb-abhorring Strunk and White disciple would say you
    were basically glumming up the whole station, right then.

    > consider options

    Well, you have no money, no car, no ticket home, and no working phone, so this
    seems like a situation that you have to puzzle through yourself. That’s kind
    of what you’re supposed to do with this sort of thing, hence the whole “adventure
    game” presentation we’re dealing with. I’m just here to assist,
    not do everything for you. Do you really expect me to just hold your hand through
    yet another self-made crisis? Take some responsibility. Either that, or call your
    mom on the payphone or something.

    > call mom on payphone

    What? Sweet lord that wasn’t a serious suggestion. My apologies. I’m
    not very good at sarcastic humor, so let’s just chalk that up to a tragic
    misunderstanding, move on, and you can choose an actual solution that’s not
    just running over to GameFAQs for your life decisions. So, okay. Right. Just type
    “cancel,” we’ll do something else. I’m sorry for chewing
    you out before. That was a mistake. I apologize. You can type “nah”
    or “no” or just an action to do something else, if you’d prefer
    that to “cancel.” I’m understanding that way.

    > call mom on payphone

    Oh dear. You’re really going forward with that. Right, so, let’s discuss
    our relationship. I don’t think we can do this any more. It just hasn’t
    been working out. We’re very different. I’ll give you a Game Over here.
    Or maybe you “Win.” That’s right. You’ve “Won.”
    Congratulations. You’ve finished Escape From Montreal. Good job. I’m
    clapping for you. Really. Please don’t contact me.

    pt II – former best friend

    In high school, I was in debate. I was sitting in that classroom one day at the
    computer, browsing MTGSalvation, and a kid named Eri I had talked to a little bit
    recognizes the site; we start talking about Magic. Outside of Magic tournaments,
    I had never met anyone who played Magic above a strictly casual level.

    We started testing for upcoming tournaments; we didn’t have the cards, so
    we used commons with the same casting costs or wrote names on bits of paper and
    stuck them in sleeves with cards of the same color. I was a lot better than him.
    Somehow, I was able to pull little mental tricks on him to make him misplay and
    throw away the win, which I’ve never even attempted on anyone else. For brief
    moments I caught glimpses of why people harped on Fact or Fiction constantly.

    We played Standard; we played Extended; we played Mental Magic; we played Solomon
    draft with random commons; we Solomon drafted with whatever rares were in our shoeboxes,
    then played the games by Type Four rules; we played Lorwyn*3 draft on Magic Online.

    He was a little under a foot shorter than me. He had other friends, I did not.
    He smoked a lot with people from our high school and elsewhere. I didn’t do
    anything like that, but I was still a little jealous that he would go out doing
    things and not invite me along. The jealousy faded a bit when his family situation
    deteriorated (his parents were divorced as well), and he moved in with my family.
    We played more Magic.

    I got hired by the Obama campaign (we had been interns together, but I showed
    up to make calls and knock doors more often than he did) and when I was working
    in San Antonio, I got a call from my parents that they took him to the hospital
    for alcohol poisoning. In the car on the way there, he kept trying to open the door
    and climb out onto the highway. When I got back home, he had to go to AA if he wanted
    to stay in the house. I walked him to his first meeting. I hoped none of the people
    watching us go up to the door recognized me. I don’t know whether he went
    to any others, but he certainly didn’t stop drinking. The liquor cabinet would
    mysteriously be minus half a bottle of vodka, two inches lower on this bottle and
    that. All in one night. It’s impressive that he lived through it, if he really
    did.

    He was a smart kid. While I did debate, he did extemp(oraneous speaking), and
    he was good at sounding convincing for nine minutes at a time. He was a good liar,
    good at looking people in the eye without overdoing it, avoiding the usual body-language
    clues. His lies, though, were truly awful. Got himself into situations that he could
    talk himself out of, but why was he in that situation in the first place? Leaving
    a Heineken bottle behind the toilet. Not thinking of doing something like refilling
    vodka bottles with water, since it’s not like my parents would have been able
    to tell the difference until they have a drink from it years in the future. Not
    noting the organization and orientation of the various bills in my stepfather’s
    wallet when he goes through it. Not thinking about the consequences of leaving my
    wallet empty in a completely different place.

    It’s difficult for me, even years later, to think about someone (especially
    a Magic player) that gets wasted on various things on a regular basis without thinking
    about Eri, and it’s become fairly important to me not to become him.

    pt III – viet-thai restaurant

    I sigh as I push aside the menu. “Why are we in here? Are there even any
    good players here? I bet this place isn’t even
    in the
    SCG guide to the city. Of course, if it had been up to Verhey, we would have somehow
    found a
    Cheesecake Factory.”

    Verhey laughs and shifts in his seat.

    “Look who just came in,” Black says. “Is that Mascioli?”

    I crane my head over. “No, can’t be. Isn’t Mascioli working
    with Channel Fireball people now? I heard he got Wrapter to design his last Standard
    deck.”

    Verhey shakes his head. “You’re thinking of Bertoncini. That’s
    some local guy. No one.”

    The local comes over and taps me on the shoulder. “Hey, Ocho, nice job on
    that last M12 walkthrough, real good stuff.”

    “Uhh, thanks,” I respond.

    I’m feeling a little embarrassed by this, so I decide to show everyone my
    new altered card. I get out my custom-painted oversized deckbox (Justin Treadway,
    $850) and slide the card on the table, waiting for reactions.

    “What’s that, Chinese Simplified?” West asks, obviously interested.

    “Korean. Just got it off someone at an upstate tournament.” I try
    to act nonchalant but can’t stop smiling. “Apparently, he was under
    the impression that Natural Order was no longer good in Legacy. Thought I was doing
    him a favor taking it off him.”

    “I didn’t even know Visions was printed in Korean.” Verhey picks
    the card up gently between his fingers, turning it over. “Great condition
    on the back.”

    “What kind of alter is that? Acrylic?” Black asks.

    “Yeah. Pretty nice, huh?”

    “That is nice, Mason,” West
    admits. “But look at this.” He slides out a metal 75-card holder from
    his beige Gap shorts, pulls out a card, and slaps it down.

    “Portuguese foil Meloku,” he explains as we stare at it, “only
    misprinted in the first edition. Quite short-run.” I feel a moment of panic,
    looking at the perfect centering of the card, so difficult to find with foreign
    foils. The art altering has left the text box completely untouched. I start sweating
    as West continues. “Italian alterer… no website… in-person commissions
    only…” Black picks it up, strokes the smooth corners, not a hint of a scuff
    or scratch on any side of it, ignoring mine completely now. How can he possibly
    think it’s better than mine? No one even plays Meloku any more.

    “But wait,” Black says, pushing West’s card back to him, “mine.

    It’s something I’ve only seen once before.

    “Is that… the one from eBay?”

    “Not the exact same, no, I had this beforehand,” Black says, leaning
    back in his chair. “There probably aren’t more than a handful of foil
    Russian Dark Confidants around, though. I considered getting that one, too, cornering
    the market, so to speak.”

    “It’s… great,” I manage to stammer out. When did Black get
    such a nice card? The alter on it doesn’t even seem to change the thickness
    at all, as if the paint was every bit a part of the card as the print was. The sleeve
    on it is somehow a deeper black; it feels heavier, everything adding to the card’s
    allure. I’m trying not to show my jealousy; I can feel my face getting redder.
    The local’s entire table is probably watching us now.

    “So are we going to get some of this Viet-Thai or what?” Verhey asks,
    obviously feeling the same way I am. Even with the sudden change of subject I can’t
    take my eyes of Black’s card.

    The waitress comes over and looks at me first. She’d probably like to start
    flirting. “Yeah, I’ll have… uh… V-1 or TS-3… whichever’s
    better.”

    “V-1 or TS-3?”

    “Whichever. I don’t care. You choose. Whatever tastes better,”
    I snap at her. She scurries away with our orders.

    “Black, I think there was someone at the GP with one of those in their binder.
    Unaltered, of course,” Verhey mentions, to take away a bit of the impact,
    but it’s a bit too late. “They invited me to… play

    games
     with them.”

    “Oh, I think I saw them,” I say, waving my hand. “What were
    they even
    playing? It had to
    be limited, they weren’t even using
    sleeves.

    “I… I don’t think they were playing a format…” Verhey says,
    glancing off to one side. “It looked like just… Magic.”

    “What do you mean, ‘just Magic?’ They must have been playing
    a format,” I say. Verhey’s lack of knowledge is irritating. “So
    what was it? Pauper cube? Rath cycle draft? Bring your own sealed?”

    “I don’t… think that it
    was limited.”



    “Well, what kind of constructed was it, then? Modern with…

    proxies?
    ” The word disgusts me. “Ice age block constructed?
    Peasant? EDH? Planechase with auctioned preconstructed decks?”

    “No… I think they were just… playing casual.

    The table is momentarily silent. We all stare at the myriad assortment of water
    glasses that’ve been accruing due to the incompetence of the waitstaff.

    “What do you mean, ‘casual?’” West finally asks.

    Verhey looks at him, brow down for a few seconds. “I’m not exactly
    sure. I think they just brought decks from home.”

    I’m suddenly angry at him. “What do you mean, brought them from home?
    Where’d they get the lists? Who’d they test them with? Did they at least
    win some daily events on Magic Online? Are they tuned at all by Thompson or Sacher?
    Did they get the lists from…
    Flores?” My
    hands are shaking, rattling the fork in my chicken and noodles with peanut sauce.
    “Abe
    Sargent?”

    “They… they… made the decks themselves.

    We all look at each other, dumbfounded.

    “How do you do that?”

    pt IV – hostel, night one

    I stayed in a hostel because it was $22 a night. Stepping out of character for
    a second here, if you’re in some foreign city and don’t know a soul
    and need somewhere to stay for a tournament or anything, really, stay at a good
    hostel and you’ll have a great time.

    Here is what happened: I walked into
    the hostel. I was shown around by an extremely cute French Canadian woman around
    my age that spoke French to me before I could muster out the French for “I
    don’t speak French,” then she apologized and talked to me in English.
    Then she pointed out the sangria. I had some sangria, and it was tangy, and chatted
    with the Australian women also around my age (maybe a couple years older?) that
    were having sangria as well. If this were fiction they would have hit on me, but
    it isn’t and they didn’t. They invited me out clubbing with a few other
    people, and I said no because I had to get to bed in order to play the first day
    of the tournament the next day. Then I asked myself exactly what I was doing with
    my life that I had just turned down clubbing with Australian women because I needed
    my sleepytime in order to play a card game. Then some French guys (as in French
    French) and one woman who was just Parisian gorgeous- whole other world from normal
    gorgeous- asked me if I’d like to go out clubbing with them. I said no because
    I had to get to bed in order to play the first day of the tournament the next day.
    They said oh please come out. I said no. They said please again but more heavily
    accented this time. I said well alright. We went to a small bar/club (still not
    sure exactly what it was) where a fairly competent DJ was playing a bunch of hip-hop
    that everyone including me was singing along to. In front of the DJ on a little
    set up above the small dance floor was a binder’s front page worth of girls
    who, a few shouted words later in the evening, I learned were from McGill; I will
    be sending my application in promptly. One of the French guys offered his hand up
    to one and she came down to dance with him and then I did the same with another
    girl but she turned out to be rather shy and frankly just not a very good dancer
    so I switched over to the girl he had invited down, which no one seemed to mind
    in the slightest, and I was still holding the drink that another French guy had
    bought me, vodka tonic, quite nice of him, possibly a bit weak because it just tasted
    fantastic in that way that either means a weak drink or a great evening, and I’m
    dancing with this girl and there are a bunch of details that absolutely fascinate
    me but will repulse a good deal of my readership, and most of them involve the manner
    in which we’re dancing and I’m putting my hands on her sides and her
    hands are going on my legs and even up around my pockets and we’re kissing
    in the middle of this dance floor and for once I have absolutely no thoughts about
    who can see me and Montreal is the best. I hold her hand and take her to an area
    near the door where it’s a bit quieter, we have a brief conversation so after
    all that I can hear what her voice sounds like. I leave.

    The next morning. The sun is shining. I can’t lose.

    pt V – favorite comment at the tournament

    “At PT: Nagoya I dropped at 1-5, so Ari Lax got me a Loxodon Wayfarer.
    For some reason he had on him one that was Japanese foil, and the artist was onsite.
    So he got it signed and gave it to me with ‘CONGRATS ON PT NAGOYA, CHRIS!’”

    “Wow. Remind me never to do badly at a Pro Tour.”

    “I don’t think you’ll ever need to worry about that.”

    pt VI – traders at magic tournaments

    Since the birth of the now-threatened Legacy card bubble, traders out to make
    a profit rather than find specific cards for their decks have shot up in number.
    It’s unclear whether there are more capitalist-minded traders due to the increase
    in columnists that write about nothing but card prices and trading advice, or whether
    those writers are a symptom of the trend toward trading Magic for financial gain;
    the two seem to have arisen simultaneously, egging each other on like children making
    fart noises in front of their increasingly annoyed parents.

    At the heart of the trading card game is a tension between people trading the
    cards and the game. While tournament players often take it for granted that players
    can find every card they need for every tournament, and never have to compromise
    their deck due to any circumstances outside the game, the traders fervently embrace
    the limited supply of cards, replacing the game of playing Magic with the metagame*
    of exploiting others’ lack of knowledge about card prices (or lack of planning
    in not getting the cards ahead of time). The tournament players think the traders
    are universally bad at Magic, and with few exceptions that’s generally true.
    The traders don’t say much of anything, because they’re making good
    money at this and very few of the players are.

    These traders only really exist because of a few facts about the cards:

    1. They are worth money. I’m getting the super-obvious out of the way here,
    but stick with it after your obligatory eyerolls, I have a destination in mind for
    this one.

    2. A whole assload of trading happens at big Magic events. Lots of players, people
    bring cards, etc. Duh-territory once again.

    3. Despite points 1. and 2., money is not allowed to be exchanged for cards, other
    than at authorized and overpriced onsite dealers.

    Here’s the important part that I had to string y’all along thus far
    to discuss: the fact that everything is exchanged card-for-card means that traders
    have the maximum possible information advantage over the general playerbase. They’re
    not exactly merchants, because if someone goes to buy something, that person hopefully
    knows roughly what the money in their pocket is worth. Traders set prices on both
    their own merchandise and the currency used to buy it.

    The thorny area is when we talk about traders “ripping someone off.”
    The whole subject makes for rather awkward dinner conversation. There are traders
    that are pretty blatant about it, just lying about what cards are worth in order
    to get an advantage. These guys are pretty bad news from just about everyone’s
    POV, but most traders are at least a bit higher up on the morality ladder than that.

    Now let’s talk about The Supreme Question of the Expert Trader.

    “What Do You Value This At?”

    While I’m unsure if it’s up to Oxford standards grammatically, it’s
    an innocent-seeming but fairly insidious phrase once we think about the implications.
    The issue here is that the person asking already knows the answer, or else they
    wouldn’t be able to afford a Standard Pauper deck once they’re done
    at a tournament. The trader is only interested if their customer thinks that the
    trader’s cards are worth more than they really are, or that their own cards
    (the customer’s) are worth less. The fact that it was the customer that suggested
    the price is pretty much irrelevant, since the trader fishes around until they get
    a nibble of incompetence from the customer, then decides to do that trade. Somehow,
    this is viewed as being more okay than claiming all one’s cards are worth
    a brazilian dollars, because rather than directly conning someone, they just wait
    to accept until the person cons themselves.

    Trading at a limited GP like Montreal is probably not as profitable, since there
    aren’t many players that will desperately need certain high-value cards immediately.
    I packed my meager binder, but didn’t trust myself with it onsite, so really
    this entire essay has next to nothing to do with Montreal and we’ll move on.

    *N.B. the use of the word to emphasize that this game-above-the-game is not the
    same thing as the “metagame” as most often used in the community; despite
    the mental intrusiveness of using a word for something notably different than its
    community-accepted definition, there is no extant word that can fill the same role
    in a less confusing manner. Rosewater and others have talked about how their internal
    usage of the word refers to all the community interactions and anything taking place
    around the game that isn’t the game itself; Magic has a multitude of metagames
    including deck construction intended to defeat a known field (traditional usage
    of the word), trading, writing essays about the game and rebuttals to those essays
    if the original author had his head in an anatomically inappropriate location, basically
    everything that occurs on Magic internet forums, etc.

    pt VII – on the oft-discussed topic of hitting on girls at magic tournaments
    (the subject of articles such as Darwin Kastle’s recent “Dating and
    Magic” at gatheringmagic):

    Don’t. Do you not interact with any women at all? There are places where
    you can talk to attractive women without a 100-to-1 ratio against you. Places include
    “bars,” “clubs,” and “life in general.”

    pt VIII – round one, against Charles-William

    Here are some of the advantages my opponent has over me.

    1. His first name is two first names. This is twice as many first names as I have.

    2. His hair has two parts in it, with a sort of semi-fauxhawk emerging above his
    head, composed of marvelously combed sandy-blond (highlighted?) hair. Mine looks
    terrible.

    3. He is French-Canadian, speaking twice as many languages as me.

    4. I can feel someone watching over my shoulder.

    5. Aside from the hair and all that, overall let’s just look at the facts
    here, this is a guy whose face is just way better-composed than mine. Prominent
    cheekbones but not to a creepy extent. He is someone I would expect to see on TV
    and someone sitting near me would make some crack about him being gay, then we would
    be depressed.

    6. The reason we’d be depressed is that we know, in our hearts, that he’s
    probably not gay. He’s probably quite straight. He probably gets laid way
    more often than we do. He is the guy leaving with the girl who blew us off.

    7. He is the guy your girlfriend had drinks with on Friday while you were playing
    Magic.

    8. To be blunt, I’m not in much of a fit state at the moment. Excuses, excuses,
    I know.

    9. Clothes. They fit. Having clothes that actually fit tends to be rather underrated,
    especially among Magic-playing circles.

    10. The body those clothes fit is actually, like, go ahead and use your imagination
    on this one and you’ll be correct.

    I had no chance in this tournament.

    pt IX – a half-remembered phone conversation between myself and the
    person I was in a long-distance relationship with

    “Well… I… I play Magic.”

    “You mean, every now and then?”

    “Well, no. Quite a bit. I’m playing this weekend.”

    She sighs. “Okay. So, a few rules. First, you will not try to teach me how
    to play. Second, you won’t even try to talk about it to me. At all. Third,
    you will never, ever, ever ditch me or cancel plans in order to play. Got that?”

    pt X – hostel, night two

    I’m bad at Magic so I take stock of what matters to me. I break out the
    two-liter of fairly nice vodka I brought in my bag. I don’t remember drinking
    of it any before this. I need to get to sleep. The vodka helps with that. Unfortunately,
    after running the common area fridge out of flat Sprite I try to take a shot with
    no chaser; I’m extraordinarily bad at this and run to the bathroom. I’m
    too preoccupied to check for anyone watching me. I think I’m okay as I’m
    facing the sink, and throw up the unidirectionally delicious chicken and noodle
    in peanut sauce into the sink. It doesn’t drain. Like, at all. I don’t
    mind much of anything at the moment. I reach my ET fingers down and kind of push
    the chicken and noodle chunks around the drain; unfortunately it settles rather
    quickly, but if I keep a circular motion going, it eventually sucks down some of
    the liquid into the pipe. This will probably stay here a while. After five minutes
    (???) I realize that, at the current rate and with the current technique, it will
    drain all the liquid and none of everything else; this will leave for whatever janitorial
    staff the possibly-ickier situation of a mass of solidish gunk. I resign myself
    to this and make sure no one sees me leaving. Above almost all else, I’m embarrassed
    that what caused the situation isn’t that I’ve had too much alcohol-
    I’m quite comfortable with the amount that I’ve had- it was just drinking
    it incompetently. I firmly commit to further practice, to avoid such unfortunate
    incidents in the future.

    I take the bottle back up to the bunk bed. In the bed below me lies Captain Sleep
    Apnea of the good ship HONK. This is what I brought the bottle for in the first
    place. Sleep arrives soon.

    pt XI – most recent long-term romantic relationship

    In April, I taught my then-girlfriend to play Magic. In a lot of ways, she was
    probably the type of person that male nerds really want to go out with and/or invent
    for their dreadful gaming-themed webcomic: she was really into anime, wore short
    skirts, and we watched 24, played Pokemon, etc. I got her to watch Burn Notice with
    me; she was not as successful in trying to get me into Gossip Girl (there are some
    plots so uninteresting even constant swigs of vodka don’t help). Teaching
    her to play Magic was probably not the best idea, since she could swing into horrific
    depression for no reason whatsoever. All the bubble-round losses I’ve seen,
    the people I’ve outdrawn on Magic Online, all the people losing in Sealed
    to Grave Titan for the third round in a row, it was nothing compared to this massive
    amount of tilt. My mental line connecting playing Magic with not getting laid had
    never been better-established than it was after those games.

    I built a few decks for us to play, including a mediocre WR aggro that I piloted
    myself, giving her the far superior UBR control with just a few win conditions in
    it. In the previous game, she had won with Niv-Mizzet (which she correctly referred
    to as “Dragon Wizard”). As we shuffled up for the next game, I noticed
    there was one card set aside. She dealt herself an opening seven by putting six
    cards on top of that card. I asked if she had snuck Niv-Mizzet into her opening
    hand, which she denied. I asked her to show me her hand, then. She reveals six cards
    from her hand.

    A few days later, I broke up with her because she had been sleeping with another
    guy. It was disorienting talking to my other friends who knew her, because she had
    told each of us inaccurate information about one another.

    I think what hurt the most was that this wasn’t some drunken spur-of-the-moment
    whim, despite how she presented herself as a spontaneous person. Her spontaneity
    was always backed up by a multi-week itemized schedule consisting of major and minor
    goals; the fact that her target was someone she referred to as a womanizer would
    help out her story later on.

    It’s easy to villainize people in retrospect. Despite my thoughts then,
    she’s not an evil person. We had a good relationship. She just set out some
    goals, then accomplished them. Following that, she created a narrative about our
    relationship, then sold people on that narrative. Mine happens to be different.

    pt XII – advice for those choosing to drink during magic tournaments

    Try to take it easy. While I understand how tempting it is to sneak off a few
    drinks every time your opponent outdraws you, it’s easy to fall victim to
    the end-of-day hangover by the later rounds, and that’s one of the worst ways
    to end a tournament.

    pt XIII – unfinished pseudo-theory article making some sort of tortured
    connection between magic and literature when, if we’re honest with ourselves,
    there isn’t that much of an overlap community-wise between the groups of people
    that “seriously care” about these two things (magic theory and literary
    theory)

    A game of Magic can be viewed either as a traditional narrative or as a dialogue,
    and either view will explain what players find “fun.” One player does
    something, the other responds (in both game language and English), the first player
    responds to that, etc. One player makes threats (act one), other player attempts
    to deal with them (act two), they succeed or fail (act three). Combo decks don’t
    do anything like this. Non-combo deck does something, combo wins. Or, even worse,
    non-combo deck does nothing, combo wins. Nearly every player has the narrative/dialogue
    ideal set up as what a Magic game should be; if the game ends up varying from that,
    the complaint is that they weren’t really playing Magic. Normal decks have,
    built into them, cards that move the game along from one act to another. Aggro’s
    one-drops and control’s removal spells move from the first to the second.
    Burn and six-mana bombs move from the second to the third, or end the story right
    there.

    Combo decks are built as monologues. To monologue, talk endlessly about and to
    oneself, is far too self-centered, confrontational, and anti-social for the group-
    and community-oriented game Wizards is pushing Magic toward. If the combo deck interacts
    in a game, it’s going to be intermittent, stilted, with long, complex passages
    that aren’t doing anything more than playing out what was inevitably decided
    by subtle, nearly invisible choices in the prologue.

    It’s not pleasant to think about, but not every game of Magic between “normal”
    decks ends up reaching that ideal, either. People get manascrewed and do nothing.
    Sometimes the three acts get all jumbled up in who did what when, sometimes an act
    gets removed entirely, sometimes they happen in the wrong order, and nearly always
    the story of what happened in a Magic game gets summarized to a more palatable,
    shorter version.

    When a game of Magic turns into a narrative after the fact, nearly all the choices
    that happened along the way get removed; the person constructing the story ends
    up accidentally fictionalizing what happened, by making it seem like there was only
    one possible outcome, or no decisions to make along the way to a single branching
    path. When games get long and somewhat interesting, there’s never only a single
    fork in the road. We just ignore what doesn’t fit into the story.

    Any tournament report by a player that isn’t very good has an unreliable
    narrator.

    pt XIV – the channel fireball
    people at gp montreal

    If it’s not obvious from the website and coverage, the Channel Fireball
    guys are the elite clique at a GP. While the SCG people might have their matching
    t-shirts that look like someone hit the wrong zoom button in MS Paint, the CF guys
    have their classy matching black with the little logo. They mostly sit around with
    other CF people. The main difference is that, at a Magic tournament, other than
    tournament games there’s a surprisingly small amount of Magic actually happening.
    CF people are always playing Magic, and there’s almost always people gathered
    around watching them.

    Here is What I Learned about How to Get Good at Magic: just play a life-consuming
    amount of Magic. When you go somewhere for Magic, don’t stand around chatting
    and gossiping, play more Magic.

    I didn’t get in close enough to do true character studies, but LSV is most
    accurately described as “bouncy.” His words have a near-melodic bouncing
    quality to them. When standing, he bounces on his black and white Adidas Sambas.
    When talking, his head bounces along with what he’s saying; laughing gives
    him a similar appearance.

    pt XV – a conversation with a parent, upon calling when I realized
    I had no money and no way to get back home [excerpt]

    “Remind me why you’re there in the first place.”

    “I can get a writing job after this, but look, this isn’t really the
    time to talk about that. I’m paying god knows how much per minute to call
    long-distance on some payphone. I’m sorry, I know I screwed up, but-”

    “You got letters from the bank.”

    “…”

    “I opened them. You’re overdrawn. Negative one hundred thirty dollars,
    after multiple $38.70 charges for debit payment on an already-overdrawn account.”

    “I don’t know how that happened. I checked before I left. I had an
    entire paycheck in there. Look, please, I’ll pay you back…”

    “Right, and how will you do that? If I remember correctly, you’re
    already supposed to be giving us $200 a month. That hasn’t happened in a while.
    Plus we already paid for your classes. The ones you wouldn’t have to take
    if you’d stayed sober long enough to show up last semester. How much does
    all that cost you a month, anyway?”

    “Look, please, just this once. Last time.”

    Sighing. “Fine.”

    Jesse Mason

    killing a goldfish

    @KillGoldfish

  • PT Paris Report

    After reading Alex Majlaton’s tournament report on thefacebook, I decided I wanted to write a report summarizing my experience at my first PT.

    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. In the decision making process, I did work with some Maryland people (Tommy Ashton, John Moore and Alex Majlaton), as well as the proficient gamer Stephen King. Stephen King (a VS and Magic guru who has lost the fire) really liked Caw-Go. Tommy was ok playing anything but was convinced to play Caw-Go at the last minute when he found out about the Stoneforge Mystic package. John Moore was sold on U/B (he had Abyssal Persecutor in his deck right until up to the PT, I believe). Alex was convinced by Stephen to play Caw-Go as well.

    As an aside: Another unfortunate thing predating this PT was the release of faction packs as prize packs at the Prerelease. As a result, we were not able to get in many drafts before the PT, but I had theories. My first theory was that red was one of the strongest colors to be still, since in Scars it was really good, and Besieged had Burn the Impure and a 4 mana 4/3 at common (which is pretty big in this format). Second, aggressive infect decks would be a lot weaker due to having one less pack of two-drops to pick up as well as white and green having great infect defensive blockers (Blightwidow and Priests of Norn).

    I only managed to do 2 drafts in Maryland, 1 fake draft in Maryland (since we ran out of faction packs of the appropriate types), and 2 team drafts the day before the PT.

    I got in (around 6:45am) after taking a flight from Dulles around 5:25pm. Falco had missed the flight because the plane in Buffalo had mechanical problems, so I had no one to talk to (although Shaheen Soorani was on my flight and was apparently sold on UW Mass Polymorph). I managed to watch two movies (Megamind and Unstoppable) and slept for 3 hours besides that. I went solo from the airport to the hotel at which Sti (Stuart Wright) said we were booked. There was a slight problem when I tried to leave my luggage there (and this turned out to be a huge problem later (ask Falco about it)) in that Sti’s name wasn’t actually on the reservation, and instead it was some French guy from the UK who had booked it for him in the French guy’s name. So I decided to take the Paris metro over to Alex/Tommy’s room. There I also discovered that Kenny Mayer was staying with them, and he was on Valakut as well. We ran into Reid Duke while going to a grocery store, and he decided to join our motley crew to chill for a bit. We ended up killing time in the hotel room as well as finding Reid’s hotel (for which he could not check in until about 3pm anyway). Then we went to the site around 5pm to see what was going on. It was disappointing that they had cut the Player party (no free food :pmosad: ), so I registered for the PT and got my free draftset and T-shirt (with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas on it).

    Eventually I found a teamdraft, with one caveat: There were no basic lands to be found anywhere. As a result, I had to proxy on my sideboard cards for basic lands, which gave me a huge headache when I was trying to figure out if something was a land or spell. I was also reasonably jetlagged by this point. Eventually Stuart Wright and Bill Nielsen (Falco) show up, and we head back to the hotel at a reasonable time since they had managed to check in before arriving at the site.

    Thursday

    I woke up feeling relatively ok since I had decided not to take a nap at all yesterday to adjust for jetlag. We entered the lobby of the hotel to get some breakfast, where some French lady bothers Sti about why we have three people (only supposed to have two) for breakfast. Sti makes up some excuse (I don’t even remember what), and we decide every day afterwards, we’ll just sneak food up to our third in the room.

    We arrive at Espace Champerret at the Hall of Expositions, and I sit down for my round 1 match. My apologies to anyone if I misremember a match, my memory for these things leaves something to be desired.

    The list I end up registering is:

    Round 1: Jonas Köstler (from Germany) (RUG Control)

    This dude seemed to know was what going on judging from his mannerisms.

    Game 1: He wins the dieroll, plays turn 1 Preordain, turn 2 Lotus Cobra, turn 3 Explore + Jace while keeping Mana Leak mana up.

    Meanwhile, I had kept a sort of slow hand with only Explore and KHE as ramp spells, so Jace draws him into a bunch of Titans and permission before I can do anything.

    Sideboard: +3 Thrun, the Last Troll, +2 Slagstorm (kills Jace postboard, and their deck has a bunch of small dudes), -4 Harrow, -1 Khalni Heart Expedition

    Game 2: I keep a reasonable but slow hand again, and he starts missing land drops. Here, I deviate from the plan of waiting out Mana Leak and start throwing out things into it (which is completely wrong, since if he is stuck on lands, it is very likely his hand is permission). Eventually he starts draw lands and plays 2 Frost Titans to do me in. If I had waited on the last 2 threats (Primeval and Zenith) to play around Leaks, I think I would have a much better chance.

    Round 2: Thomas Ma (of PT Amsterdam t8) (Valakut)

    Game 1: He wins the dieroll, has a reasonable draw that plays a t4 Titan if he doesn’t brick off a land from Explore. He bricks, then I play a titan and kill him. (Not very exciting, but that’s how dumb the mirror match is).

    Sideboard: -2 Oracle of Mul Daya, -1 Avenger of Zendikar, +3 Acidic Slime (oracle is just a really slow ramp spell, and Avenger is not really the card you want to draw in the mirror)

    Game 2: He has a reasonable hand with a turn 2 Overgrown Battlement, but my draw of turn 2 Lotus Cobra, t3 Harrow, Harrow, play Expedition, the following turn play Titan has him almost dead, then he packs.

    Round 3: Daniel Steinsdörfer (Valakut)

    Game 1: He wins the dieroll, plays a few ramp spells, while I keep a hand with ramp but no gas. I start attacking him with Raging Ravine, and he takes enough hits to go to 4 life. I can then peel a Valakut or a Harrow to lethal him with vs his Primeval Titan that he has just drawn. I peel a Valakut, play Titan to go get 2 mountains, and he dies on like turn 8 in a very confusing game.

    Sideboard: -2 Oracle, -1 Avenger, +3 Acidic Slime.

    Game 2: He mulligans to 5, does nothing and dies to my Primeval Titan that arrives on turn 4.

    Round 4: Gerard Fabiano (Caw-Go with mystics (he had equipment, but I never saw a mystic, but I would assume he had them))

    Game 1: I just ramp past his Mana Leaks and play some duders that resolve and kill him with Titan/Valakut triggers.

    Sideboard: -4 Harrow, -2 Avenger, -3 Explore, +3 Thrun, the Last Troll, +3 Acidic Slime, +2 Gaea’s Revenge, +1 Koth of the Hammer

    Game 2: I play a turn 3 Thrun, the Last Troll which is quickly trumped by his turn 5 Baneslayer Angel, turn 6, attack for 9, turn 7, attack for 9, and I am dead.

    Sideboard: (on the play I still want explore, I think) +1 Explore, -1 Koth of the Hammer (Koth doesn’t match up very well vs Baneslayers).

    Game 3: I get another turn 3 Troll, which in conjunction with Raging Ravine bashes him for 8 once before he plays Squadron Hawk to find 3 more buddies. Eventually we get to a board state where he has to probably tap out to stop my men even though he has Hawk + Sword of Feast and Famine online. I manage to stick a Titan. Then he plays and equips Sword of Body and Mind to try to mill enough Mountains so he is not dead. This doesn’t happen, and I win.

    Round 5: Shintaro Ishimura (Caw-Go with Mirran Crusader, and I find out later Student of Warfare as well).

    Game 1: He wins the dieroll and leads with t2 Leak for explore, t3 Crusader, attack me with it 5 times with countermagic backup until I was dead :/

    Sideboard: +3 Acidic Slime, +2 Slagstorm (not great here, but kills Mirran Crusader which is a huge problem otherwise), -4 Harrow, -1 Avenger

    Game 2: He has t2 Stoneforge Mystic, t3 Mirran Crusader, t4 equip BG sword onto Crusader, t5 equip UG sword onto Crusader, and I am instantly dead.

    At this point, I realize going 3-2 in the standard portion with Valakut is not horrible, but I was wishing that I had played the UW Mystic deck instead.

    Draft Portion

    I open Consecrated Sphinx and take it over Burn the Impure (so I probably won’t see any red pack two). I pick up 2 Leonin Relic-Warders, and a bunch of reasonable men but nothing special (Hexplate Golem 14th, and this card is actually reasonable when you need a finisher). Pack 2, I take a bunch of mana myr, two Volition Reins but decline to take a 9th pick Scrapdiver Serpent (which my deck sorely needed). Pack 3, I take Arc Trail and Scrapmelter on the splash deciding my deck needs more power to even have a shot of winning.

    I immediately go 0-2 (r1 vs Olle Rade, he plays 2 flamefiends in games 1 and 3, I draw 10 extra cards or so in game 2 with Consecrated Sphinx). (r2 vs Matthew Griffin, both games go long, but in g1, I die to his Argent Sphinx, and in g2, my last 3 cards (in my library) are Volition Reins, Island, Consecrated Sphinx. If I had drawn Sphinx midgame in game 2, I would have easily won on the stable board state (or if Hexplate Golem had been a Scrapdiver Serpent that I should have taken. I decide to drop after this, not thinking about top 200 getting an extra pro point.

    I find out that Sti has gotten a bye into day 2 (the other person in his pod who was 0-2 dropped, so Sti just got a bye into it). I decide that I want to play Goblins in the Legacy Challenge tomorrow (lol, when will I ever learn?).

    Friday

    I enter the Legacy Challenge, beat some dude in the mirror r1, lose to some dude playing infect r2 (g1, he goes t1 land Lotus petal, plague stinger. My t1 is land vial, go. His t2 is, rancor, invigorate, invigorate, BAM YU DEAD.) r3, I lose to some guy in the Goblins mirror because he has 2 sharpshooters postboard (easily the most important card in the mirror), even though he left in Warren Weirding (easily the worst card in the mirror, and had Lightning Bolt (an awful card in this deck). R4, I just get steamrolled by elf combo (g1 he had me dead on t3, g2 I kill 4 of his guys with pyrokinesis, then he plays Caller of the Claw and attacks me). At this point I drop, and decide to go railbird and teamdraft some. I team with BJB and Harry C and we fight 3 guys from France/Canada (not sure) and defeat them. Psychosis Crawler beats me in 1 match, but I 2-0 the other guys fairly easily. I also sign up for the GP!

    Saturday

    I open a reasonable pool, but nothing exciting. Also turned out I only had 1 bye (1943, damn you PR) :/ Won my r2 match easily vs a dude who had also played in the PT, and his sealed deck appeared to be monowhite (????). r3, lost to a friendly guy who was R/b. I misplayed in g2 by not clasping his iron myr to keep him off 6 mana (to return his shrunk Phoenix with metalcraft and equip bonehoard). R4, I gave some guy an unreal beating by playing a bunch of removal and idiots. R5, I lost to a guy who played ok, since I got stuck on 2 lands for 5 turns in g3. After this I decide to drop and railbird / draft with friends.

    I make friends with Thomas Ma and Jason Ford this day, since I’m doing stone-nothing and watch Ma go 8-2, BJB go 9-1 (his deck was average, but he should have started by splashing red), and Falco go 8-2 with his awesome Tezzeret deck. I also run around the hall looking for a Faeries deck for the PTQ tomorrow, since I am pretty sure the PTQ will be a lot smaller than other GP PTQs because of a cash sealed tournament starting around the same time. I end up getting back to the hotel room very late after finishing a team draft with people.

    Sunday

    I still manage to wake up around 7am (to go with Falco to the site). Sti staggers in around then (he said the metro restarted at 6am!)

    I register the following deck (Faeries YU):

    Wednesday

    A few quick notes: I spent a bit of time discussing what the sideboard would be with Reid (who was also entering the PTQ with his homebrew Bant deck). Basically I wanted to make sure to have enough cards to board in/out for the matchups I expected (Jund/Naya/RG and UG/UGW scapeshift, as well as Faeries mirror).

    I really don’t remember many of the games well, so I’ll just go over a few interesting board states/decisions I had to make, as well as a quick rundown of the matches I played.

    R2g2 vs Faeries (Masayasu Tanahashi) in the mirror (I had lost game 1).

    My opening hand is Secluded Glen, Sunken Ruins, Tectonic Edge, Bitterblossom, Thoughtseize, Jace Beleren, Cryptic Command.

    I Thoughtseize him on t1, revealing Blossom, and see his hand of: Secluded Glen, Island, Tectonic Edge, Bitterblossom, Inquisition of Kozilek, Vampire Nighthawk, Mana Leak.

    I tank on a while on taking Inquisition vs Blossom, and eventually to decide to take Blossom. Postboard, he should only have 4 Sprite, 3 Blossom left in his deck as reveals to Glen, as well as 2 Swamp and 4 Darkslick Shores. Blossom is still the most important card anyway in the mirror based on our hands, so I take it. His turn 1, he bricks on a Faerie or untapped black land, so he just plays t1 Glen, pass. Turn 2, I play Mutavault and Blossom, his t2, he inquisitions me, takes a nighthawk I have drawn (note, I can’t even cast Nighthawk as it is), and plays island and ships. On my t3, I decide to gun out Beleren, and he shows me Spell Pierce. I wasn’t sure if I should attack with Mutavault or play Beleren. I end up losing this game to his Nighthawk + Sword of Feast and Famine as well as double Cryptic Command (since Nighthawk + Sword let him untap all of his lands).

    R1 vs Jund (Pierre Compan) win 2-1.

    R2 vs Faeries (Masayasu Tanahashi) Lose 0-2.

    R3 vs Naya Allies (hadrien Peudecoeur) Win 2-0.

    R4 vs Jund (Hugo Tranchant) Win 2-0.

    R5 vs RG Scapeshift (Johnny J. Niemeyer) Win 2-0

    R6 vs Soul Warden + Ajani’s Pridemate deck (Ray Doyle) Win 2-0 (He presented 59 cards in g2).

    R7 vs RG Scapeshift (Jonathan Rotstejn) Win 2-1 (He played Fallout at the incorrect time in g3 (he was supposed to wait for Spellstutter’s trigger to be on the stack before Fallouting).

    R8 vs UGW Scapeshift (Marien Couvertier) Win 2-1 (His hand in g3 was 2 Autumn’s Veil + Scalding Tarn at one point. I asked for an Oracle wording since his Veils were in French, and I wanted to make sure that Spellstutter Sprite was unaffected by them.)

    Top Eight

    R9 (r1 of t8) vs Combo Elves with Zenith (Bernhard Lehner) Win 2-1. G1, I get SMASHED since he is on the play and he just dumps his hand and casts Primal Command, knowing not to go after my manlands when I have mana up. G2, He makes a risky attack that hinges on his Warcaller living. I show him go for the throat after declaring blockers, and we move to g3. Also of note this game, I played 2 early Bitterblossoms, since basically they can’t burn you out ever and having infinite men is an easy way to win. The only card that could possibly worry you is Windstorm (which Reid had in his board, but I don’t think anyone else played) or Cloudthresher (more likely). G3, he mulls into a risky hand, and I trade Mutavault for a dude early and start mowing down his guys with removal, as well as taking his only gas card with Inquisition.

    R10 (r2 of t8) vs GW Trap (Chikara Nakajima) Win 2-1. G1, I win barely without bitterblossom due to Vendilion + Mistbind Clique as well as killing his mana idiots. G2, he plays a t3 primeval titan on the play, and that is game. G3, he plays an edge precombat on t4, so I edge him inside his combat step, then he tries to go to edge me, and realizes I now only have 3 lands in play. Eventually I just kill his guys with 2 cryptics in my hand while taking damage from Noble Hierarchs. Very unexciting.

    R11 (finals of PTQ) vs Faeries (Masayasu Tanahashi) Win 2-0. He just mulligans to 5 twice, and sort of makes a game of game 1 and 2, but in the end can’t pull it out.

    It was a huge relief to already requalify (just after my first PT, basically!). I am determined to do much better in Nagoya!

    As an aside, if you would like to play Faeries in the remaining PTQs, I would suggest adding 2 Sword of Feast and Famine, cutting 1 removal spell, and 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor from the maindeck. In the sideboard, Negate should become Countersquall.

    Again, any comments or suggestions about how I could improve my writing are greatly appreciated.

    Shoutouts

    Tom Ma, Maryland dudes (Alex Majlaton, Tommy Ashton, John Moore, Stephen King), Reid Duke, Jason Ford, Bill Nielsen, Stuart Wright, Levi Hinz, Chifley Cole, Stephen Murray, as well as other GoodGamery people.

    I appreciate the support that you guys gave me during all of the tournaments as well as during preparation for the PT.

    –llarack

  • Cambridge PTQ Report

    Saturday morning rolls around and I’m up bright and early to catch a train to Cambridge to play in a PTQ. With that delightful introduction out of the way, let’s take a look at my decklist:

    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. They go together quite well, because all the acceleration in the mythic deck comes in the form of creatures (Hierarchs, Birds, Cobras, Knights) which don’t get in the way of using Bloodbraid Elf to guarantee Vengevine triggers – while at the same time, the Fauna Shaman functions as extra copies of the Sovereigns whenever that plan would be appropriate.

    The manabase is quite strong, because although it is a four-colour deck, we only have 3 blue spells and 4 red spells, and the vast majority of our lands tap for the green that is most important, while access to white is pretty easy too – although it might be correct to go to a 3 Hierarch/3 Birds split as the extra red source was needed a couple of times, probably more than the extra damage from the Hierarch would be relevant.

    That Briarhorn probably looks really weird, too. Originally that slot was Cloudthresher, but we found that surprising faeries with a thresher was really difficult when it required an extra green mana (Fauna Shaman activation), and there was an interesting interaction that came up in testing that made us determined to include a flash creature: basically, decks with cryptic (mostly wargate) would be tapping our team to stay alive for an extra turn, but if we had cast a cheap creature in our mainphase we could respond to the cryptic by activating a Fauna Shaman and finding the Briarhorn – Then we could let the cryptic resolve, and flash the Briarhorn to return any Vengevines in the bin so that we’d actually get an attack that turn. Briarhorn just happened to be the best cheap flash option; we couldn’t support Vendilion Clique because getting double blue was quite difficult. In hindsight, the Briarhorn was too cute and situational, and should have been something else.

    The sideboard, as is so common when I play constructed, is almost all based on theory and doesn’t have much testing to back it up. The Pridemages and Deglamers are obviously for enchantments and artifacts – the Deglamer in particular is for Wurmcoil, the Finks are for Jund, Red, possibly Naya, the Paths are also for Jund and maybe Faeries, the Stags for Faeries, and the Wall mostly for Jund.

    Anyway, with the decklist behind us, let’s take a look at the PTQ: we get 78 players, including quite a few of the better English players, and after your typical tournament delay we get started.

    Round 1 – Guy Southcott w/ Faeries

    The first game quickly becomes a race as he has Scion, Vendilion and then Mistbind while I’ve got Knight of the Reliquary and various beaters – the key turn comes when he has to Cryptic Command to stay alive and kill me next turn, tapping my team and bouncing my Raging Ravine, but I’m able to activate the Ravine then find Sejiri Steppe with the Knight to give it protection from blue and fizzle the Command.

    I board out the Sovereigns and the Conscriptions as I feel it is hard too hard to land them against faeries, as well as the Baneslayer, the Teeg and the Briarhorn, and possibly a Lotus Cobra as well – when I’m taking out the entire Conscription package, I don’t feel like I have as much to accelerate into. I put in some combination of Pridemages, Stags, Deglamers and exactly one Path.

    Game two he doesn’t have a very good start at all and isn’t doing much, and when he goes for the turn five MutavaultMistbind, I’ve obviously drawn the singelton Path I’ve brought in. Various creatures clean up.

    Round 2 – Will Dunn w/ Merfolk

    Game one I’ve got the nutty Hierarch, Cobra, Knight opening, which means I end turn three with a massive army on the board. I start using Fauna Shaman to turn Vengevines into Bloodbraid Elfs, and although I miss that I can Shaman for Sovereigns and protect it from Path with a Sejiri Steppe thus giving him two extra turns, I’ve still got enough to easily overwhelm him./

    I don’t exactly remember how I sideboarded against him, but I know that I brought in the Stags, and I’m guessing I cut the Qasali Pridemage and the Briarhorn.

    The second game he has Coralhelm Commander, Merrow Reejerey and Merfolk Sovereign. I try to set up a lethal conscription for the next turn, but he is able to level up the Commander, animate a Mutavault, and use the Merfolk Sovereign’s ability get me for lethal.

    Game three and I develop my board with mana accelerants and a Fauna Shaman; when he uses his Rejeerey to tap a blocker and doesn’t leave any mana open during my turn I’m able to use the Shaman to find Sovereigns, which puts me easily far enough ahead – I was quite fortunate in that none of my cascades in the first two games had revealed either Sovereigns or Eldrazi Conscription, so Will couldn’t have known that I had the mythic package in my 75.

    Round 3 – Stephen Murray w/ Naya

    Game one I end quickly with an early Sovereigns, and I don’t have much of a sideboard for him – I take out the Teeg and the Pridemage and bring in a pair of Paths, before quickly losing game two after his mulligan has some Figures of Destiny and a Bloodbraid Elf while my double-mulligan kind of has nothing.

    Game three I once again assembled a lethal Sovereigns before I was in much danger from his team.

    Round 4 – John-Joseph Wilks w/ Tempered Steel

    Game one he has a Thoughtseize and a Tidehollow Sculler to slow me down, but he is failing to find a third land to cast his various anthem effects, and I have enough time to assemble a team and bash him in while he can’t attack with much except a Court Homunculus.

    I take out the Teeg, Baneslayer, Briarhorn, and one copy each of Sovereigns and Conscription to bring in the Pridemages and the Deglamers.

    Game two has him again with some slight mana problems and plinking away with some dorks, before a Fauna Shaman finds a Sovereigns and takes the game away.

    Round 5 – Joseph Jackson w/ Jund

    Game one I’ve got a reasonably sized team, but he gets a Fauna Shaman active and I make a crucial mistake – I use the Shaman to find a Sovereigns and put him on 2, but then he untaps, plays a forest, activates the Shaman again discarding Demigod to find a third Demigod, and lethal me. If I’d just used the Fauna Shaman to find Baneslayer, I wouldn’t have died that turn and finding the Sovereigns next turn would have been good enough for lethal.

    Against Jund, my main concern is the Demigods; aside from those we found it quite hard for Jund to beat us, so I take out the entire Conscription package as well as Teeg, Briarhorn and Pridemage, and bring in 3 Paths, 1 Wall, and 4 Kitchen Finks.

    Game two he has a Thoughtseize for my Fauna Shaman, but I rattle a string of hits off the top of my deck and he has to have a removal spell for all of them: Shaman, Shaman, Baneslayer, and despite being able to kill them all, a Stirring Wildwood combines with a pair of Hierarchs to bring his life total down low, before a raw drawn Sejiri Steppe squeaks through the last 3 points.

    Game three I don’t remember particularly well, but I’ve got a pair of Path to Exiles so I’m not going to lose to the Demigods, and various attacking creatures are hard for him to block profitably since I’ve got the exalted triggers again. Sejiri Steppe is again played from hand for the final points, although I had this one anyway.

    Round 6, Round 7

    Two intentional draws.

    Top Eight

    Top 8 contains me, two Jund, a Faeries, a Tempered Steel, a Naya, a Mythic and a UW Control. The only deck I’m explicitly scared of is the UW Control, which is both a really bad match-up for me and piloted by Dan Gardner, who if you haven’t heard is pretty good at this Magic game we play. Luckily, he is top of swiss and I’m second, so we’re in opposite halves and I get to play:

    Quarterfinals – Carrie Oliver w/ Tempered Steel

    Game one I lead with Hierarch and I get a fright when she leads with Windbrisk Heights; I briefly think I’m playing against GW-trap which is a probably a poor match-up for me – I say probably, because I certainly didn’t bother testing against it. Luckily a turn two Steel Overseer means she is just playing Tempered Steel, and I get a turn four Sovereigns, on the play, which is easily fast enough against her slow draw.

    I side out Teeg, Briarhorn, Baneslayer, 1 Sovereigns, 1 Conscription and bring in the Pridemages and the Deglamers.

    Game two I keep a hand that I should have mulliganed: 3 lands, Birds, and 3 Lotus Cobras. I draw land, land, land, Fauna Shaman, Qasali Pridemage, and I’m very quickly beaten down by a trio of Master of Etheriums and a Tempered Steel. That hand is basically me playing off the top of my deck, and if I miss on my removal and Fauna Shamans in the first couple of turns, I’m basically dead.

    During game two she had played Meddling Mage naming Sovereigns, so I side out the remaining two and the Conscription for the three Path to Exiles.

    Game three and I keep Razorverge Thicket, Island, Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary, Knight of the Reliquary, Bloodbraid Elf, Vengevine. Again, perhaps I should have taken the mulligan, although I think this keep is a lot more defensible – as it happens, I draw another Bloodbraid Elf and another Vengevine instead of the land or the removal I need, and I die to the quick draw of turn 1 Memnite, Memnite, Ornithopter, turn 2 Tempered Steel.

    Ugh. So that’s another PTQ with a disappointing finish, although I do get another shot at Nagoya, next week in London. Whether or not I’ll play this deck again is up in the air: on the one hand, I feel like the deck is quite good, but I also feel like the metagame here is likely to be unfriendly towards it: Jund and Naya were both quite popular in Cambridge, and the cards people play to beat those decks tend to be good against this deck as well. However, if your local metagame is a bit friendly and you want to try something you might not have used before, give this deck a shot. It does have some wonderfully enjoyable moments where you sit back and look at VengevineBloodbraid Elf explosion and suprise Sovereigns, and think to yourself “my deck is unreal dumb.”

  • PTQ Report 12/5 Brisbane – *1st*

    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.

    It’s for that reason that I’ve barely practiced the Scars of Mirrodin format at all. I’ve done a total of 2 drafts in the past 6 weeks. I was convinced that I couldn’t really get an edge in this format and would likely be a victim to my sealed pool, so I spent time focusing on poker…I mean losing money at poker. I also made the poor decision to drink the night before, so I was super seedy on the morning of the event.

    I had my mate Justin Cheung from Sydney staying at my house for this event, which was a little scary as he’s really, really good and we’ve have far too many Brisbane events poached by interstate players, but he’s a good guy and if he’s good enough to win it, then so be it.

    So all I had under my belt was roughly 5 sealed pools and 15 drafts, and the knowledge that the bombs are really, really good in this format, and good removal is essential. Lack of removal (well, and lack of bombs) was why I did so poorly at the GP, so I was most keen for a removal heavy pool at this event.

    My sealed deck:

    Other notable cards were:

    Dispense Justice
    Seize the Initiative
    Glint Hawk
    Chrome Steed
    Auriok Replica
    Heavy Arbalest
    Abuna Acolyte
    Memnite

    So what stuck out for me was the sweet colorless bombs and good red removal. Sick as. I then had a choice between white and maybe blue, but ended up going white for the Arrest, Smith, and Hawks. The last card I cut was the Chrome Steed, as my artifact count was perhaps a little bit low, and a card that was sometimes a 4/4 but more often a 2/2 wasn’t going to cut it in my super-controlling deck.

    Round 1: Robbie Jackway

    Robbie is a real solid player, and apparently one of the few QLD players who can top 8 at Nats PTQ. His deck is pretty sick here, but my draws were so amazing that him playing Myr Battlesphere and Contagion Engine didn’t phase me at all. My own Engine and Oxidda Scrapmelter cleaned him up. In game 2 I beat him by assembling the Bloodshot Trainee combo, and I also had another Trainee as backup should he deal with the first.

    2-0 games, 1-0 matches

    Round 2: Kobi Mccleod

    As I’m approaching the table, Kobi says “I’m not playing you, am I!?” I slow roll it for a bit, look around at all the surrounding table numbers with a puzzled look before sitting down across from him. I also messed with his head a bit, saying “Wow, did you win? How did that happen?” Trattman laughed at me for trying to tilt a 12 year old, but it was all in good fun, as I have a history of trash talk with Kobi.

    Nothing too exciting happened in the matches, I assembled a machine gun in one game, and in the other I just played big dudes. Notably I had to recast my 8 drop a few times because he had Dissipation Field. His deck was actually really, really good, with Venser, The Sojourner plus good effects to use it with, but my deck came out too fast.

    4-0 games, 2-0 matches

    Round 3: Dale Wright

    Something really wacky happened with the pairings this round, so players got paired based on their round 1 points, rather than their round 2 points. So a bunch of win-win players were paired with win-loss players. I got paired down to Dale.

    Game one was a bit of a race, he had infinite 2/2 flyers and I had some sizable guys and Spikeshot Elder. Eventually the Elder became active for 3 pings. His board was 3 artifacts, including Rust Tick and Rustic Golem. On his turn he casts Tempered Steel, and I screw up by not killing his Rust Tick in response. I end up having to chump block the Rustic Golem and just cant get back into the game despite killing a bunch of his artifacts.

    Game 2 is really close too, but I recover just enough to stay alive with some powerful artifacts. However he draws like a champ, ripping multiple Sylvok Replicas off the top. I end up at about 2 life when we’re both empty again, and I end up assembling some equipment and dudes and attack him from 26 down to zero before he draws any more threats.

    Game 3 he doesn’t draw very well and my sweet removal cleans him up.

    6-1 games, 3-0 matches

    Round 4: James Jackway and Jerimiah

    I haven’t seen James in the 18 months since his accident. He was working as a rescue helicopter paramedic, being winched onto a ship when a cable snapped and he smashed his spine. Still, he hadn’t lost his ability to play magic, so with his nephew Jerimiah holding the cards and taking orders, he’s battled his way to 3-0. Not that he needed much help with Sunblast Angel, Hoardsmelter Dragon, and Geth, Lord of the Vault in his deck.

    Game 1 started out pretty well, I dealt with many of his threats after taking early damage, and we were both roughly 6 life while he had an empty board and I had 3 creatures. He then topdecks Hoardsmelter Dragon and I scoop to it.

    Game 2 I assembled 2x Bloodshot Trainee combo! I did take a bit of extra damage here and there though, because I never wanted to tap both of them in his turn and lose them to Sunblast Angel. (Sunblast Angel is seriously the best card to know is in your opponents deck.) Eventually I build up a board and he either just drew the Sunblast, or was slow-rolling it. He kills about 3 of my creatures including one of the trainees, and I’m able to kill the Angel and control the game.

    Game 3 he just draws mostly land and none of his bombs, and I’m able to play my power cards and overwhelm him.

    8-2 games, 4-0 matches

    Round 5: Kyle Trattler

    So somehow I don’t know anything about Kyles deck at this point, strange given I’ve sat next to him a few times. In Game 1 he plays some UW lands and spells, and I assemble 2x Bloodshot Trainee with 1 equipment. I end up taking a bit of extra damage from his guys because I’m not sure if he has Sunblast Angel, but in the end I take way more damage than I should, playing around an Angel when at times he didn’t have the mana to play it!

    Still, even when playing poorly its difficult to lose with two cannons on the table.

    In game 2, I mulligan a crap hand into a 1-lander, which was Mountain, Darksteel Axe, Iron Myr, Glint Hawk Idol, Oxidda Scrapmelter, and Contagion Clasp. So many powerful spells for not many mana,so I keep it on the draw. I miss on turn 2, but get there on turns 3 and 4, and play out all my awesome spells while he struggles to maintain a board presence.

    Turns out his deck has TWO Venser, The Sojourner, and a bunch of good effects to abuse, but his deck never gets online.

    10-2 games, 5-0 matches.

    So my deck provided the nuts for 5 rounds, and I lost 1 game to a dragon and 1 game to me being an idiot. Good times. In the next two rounds I ID with Justin Cheung and Rory O’Hagan. In the end, there’s a few too many IDs, and one player ID’s themself out of top 8. Rough beats.

    Top 8

    There’s some discussion about what the easiest way would be to allow James to draft, and in the end he said he’d be happy to have Jerimiah hold the cards up for him to indicate his pick. To make it easier the draft was untimed. Seating was:

    1. James Jackway
    2. Chris Worrell
    3. Matthew Tyrell
    4. Thor Whilmer
    5. Levi Hinz
    6. Rory O’Hagan
    7. Nathan Wintle
    8. Justin Cheung

    So I would face James in the Quarters. Also interesting that I wouldn’t face Justin until the finals, but I was fairly confident he’d at least make the finals, because he’s amazing.

    My first pack I open Kuldotha Pheonix and Shatter, preferring the “Take the bomb and hope it works out” over the “keep options open” approach. 2nd pick was an Arc Trail over Shatter, which was unfortunate for signals, and then a 3rd pick Arrest landed in my pile. Nothing much else happened in pack 1 other than me taking a few blue cards because it seemed underdrafted. Also of note was a Sunspear Shikari, and I was hoping to take a few more equipment for the Shikari deck later on.

    In pack two my first pick was weak but somehow I ended up with A THIRD PICK PRECURSOR GOLEM!!! It was foil, so the rare and an uncommon were missing. I don’t know what the rare was, but Rory to my left took Skinrender. I think the Golem is probably better but its debatable. Still I wasn’t complaining. I continued to get a bunch of red removal spells and white creatures, and I hate drafted some big blue flyers and a few infect cards. Both those archetypes were being severely underdrafted it seemed. I also grabbed a Bloodshot Trainee and a Barbed Battlegear in this pack.

    Pack 3 had a Oxidda Scrapmelter and Glimmerpoint Stag. It would have been nicer to see them in different packs but I can’t complain about opening a Scrapmelter. I also got a Stag later on so its all good. I couldn’t find any more equipment for my shikari and Trainee other than a Strider Harness, which obviously doesn’t work with the Trainee but hopefully it would be useful.

    In the end my deck was just like my sealed: Red removal, combos, and a few bombs.

    Quarterfinals: James Jackway and Jerimiah

    James was poison in this draft. Game 1 he was pretty slow though, and I had 3/3’s at the right time to trade with Ichorclaw Myr. I went to about 3 poison but assembled the cannon to wrap up the game.

    Game 2 I was pretty slow. He didn’t have a 2 drop but had Cystbearer on 3. I had Bloodshot Trainee on turn 4, but I didn’t have the Battlegear, so I decided the best use of Trainee was to block the Cystbearer twice. Unlucky for me I drew the Battlegear after the first block. I didn’t really have other plays so I played a Strider Harness, but then my brain started working and I realized I could double equip the Bloodshot Trainee to get him active. He had a Strider Harness as well, and also a Tel Jilad Fallen, So I went to 9 poison while mopping up his team. He didn’t have much more after that so I managed to win while on the brink of death.

    Semifinals: Matthew Tyrell

    He had a RWg removal deck as well, except that his removal was way better than mine. “Sometimes a 1/1 myr goes all the way” he said. Double Arrest, double Dispense Justice, Shatters, Bolts, Slags, etc. He’s also hella greedy and has Acid-Web Spider as well. I was not feeling confident.

    Game 1 I had Kuldotha Phoenix and Precursor Golem in hand, but he being pretty loose with how he held his hand and let me see what looked like an Arrest in his hand. I played Precursor Golem first and he had Revoke Existence, and then had Arrest for my Phoenix. I debated casting Turn to Slag on my phoenix and regrowing him, but I only had 3 artifact and figured he’d be able to kill one. He did play Acid-Web Spider, and flickered it with Stag, to kill the two equipment I had in play. I drew blanks for many, many turns and he stuck a creature which went all the way.

    Game 2 I’m sketchy on the details, but I’m pretty sure it involved some flyers wearing a Battlegear. 6 power flyers? You betcha!

    Game 3 he mulliganed to 6, tanked, and kept. He was basically on 1 land for most of the game, while I had turn 2 myr, turn 3 myr, turn 4 Precursor Golem + Glint Hawk to ensure at least one 3/3 was getting through should he have removal. He scooped.

    Finals: Justin Cheung

    So the lone invader from Sydney crashes at my house and then we meet in the finals. Like I said, Juzza is amazing. Unfortunately I hadn’t seen anything of his deck as I was playing longer than him both matches. It was probably sick though.

    Game 1 He plays turn two Riddlesmith, and on turn 3 he triggers it twice but still misses land 3. Turn 4 he plays a Myr and misses again. But this point he’s discarded Sky-Eel School and Volition Reins, which he now believes was a mistake. It was also possibly a mistake of mine to not trade my myr with his Riddlesmith, but I kept it instead to play turn 4 Kuldotha Pheonix. he plays a Grand Architect, which powers out a bunch of nuts stuff, and we’re racing. I get a Snapsail Glider in play along with a Myr and Pheonix, and he’s tapped out after an attack. I draw Glint Hawk, so I’m able to attack with all three of my guys to put him at 6, then bounce and replay the myr to allow for chump blocking. He attacks with everything but the Architect, I chump with my myr, and use Panic Spellbomb to make his Flight Spellbomb irrelevant on the attack back.

    Game 2 his had Architect again, and I Arrest it. He has a Sky-Eel School which I momentarily forget is a 4/4, while pondering whether I should offer a trade with an equipped Glint Hawk. I work it out before I make any dumb plays though. I play some cards, he atacks, and then I play a Glimmerpoint Stag which gets in there for haste with the Glint Hawk, and we’re racing. He has Volition Reins though, and cracks back with a hasted Stag. I try to Revoke Existence on his Reins, but he Disperses to get it back. I crack back again and play a Necropede, and equip that instead of the stag so he can’t haste me.

    I’m on really low life though and he has a 4/4 flyer and a Reins in hand. I’m trying to work out if I can win if I draw Pheonix but I’m pretty sure I’m dead. He plays WURMCOIL ENGINE though and its a lot more obvious that I’m dead.

    In game 3 I again have the turn four Kuldotha Phoenix, but he sideboarded in a Bonds of Quicksilver which deals with it. I have 5 mana including 2 myr, and use Turn to Slag on his Grand Architect, lose one of my myr to Instill Infection, and then use Oxidda Scrapmelter the following turn on his Moriok Replica. I’m struggling to find 6 land so I can get in with Flameborn Hellion, but I attack anyway with Oxidda Scrapmelter and Myr into his Perilous Myr. He tanks and decides to trade with Scrapmelter, and he now has a 3/3 flyer to my 1/1 myr. I drop my 5th mana and a Snapsail Glider, and we trade 3 damage for turn or two, then eventually I draw a sixth mana to cast my haste guy. He keeps attacking, but my beats are just too fast, and the best chump blocker he can find is a Necrogen Scudder which makes him lose 3 life anyway, so my next attack is exactly lethal with help of Arc Trail. He’s holding 3 land.

    So after 3 years and a string of second-to-fourth-place finishes, I’ve finally won another PTQ! I’ve been excited about the idea of the super-pro-tour ever since I heard the Magic Weekend announcement. For those who haven’t heard, that means there’s a Pro Tour and Grand Prix on the same weekend in Paris, and I get to play in both of them. So cool!

    Props!

    • James Jackway – For being a champ. You can break his back but not his spirit nor his magical ability.
    • Jerimiah – For spending 8 hours holding and tapping cards for uncle James. You did a great job, kid.
    • Juzza – For not beating me and stealing another Brisbane PTQ :P Bad luck mate!

    Slops – How can there be slops, I’m going to Paris!

    Thanks for reading.

    – Levi Hinz

  • PTQ Report 11/14 Rochester – *1st*

    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. I’m overmatched at Grand Prixs and Pro Tours, but at a PTQ I am most likely to meet someone who is about where I am in terms of skill. More so than any other match, these victories are the ones I enjoy most.

    The venue for this PTQ was Rochester, which provided me the privilege of being only an hour away from Buffalo. I was able to get up at a reasonable time and drive myself to the event. I chatted with a few acquaintances to kill time, and then started listening to a podcast. After nervously waiting while we got seated and registered decks, we finally got passed our pools. Without looking inside the bag that contained my pool, I offered to trade it with anyone else’s. After a bit of hand-wringing from others, I did eventually find a taker in Bob, the person seated diagonally from me.

    Coming into the tournament I thought I had enough experience with this sealed format that I’d be ready for anything, but then this pool caused me to feel foolish. After the requisite handling of the infect cards (into a trash can), I was left with a significant problem: the cheap artifact cards in this pool are pretty shallow. I have 0 Myr, while the Spellbombs and Replicas I have pull me away from my most powerful colors.

    I started with a U/W deck because it seemed the most synergistic color combination, but was pretty unhappy with both the overall power level and the near total lack of removal. I next attempted a B/R deck designed to house my most powerful cards, but without relevant cheap artifacts I couldn’t take advantage of the red. A U/B/r seemed like the best place to be, and so I spent considerable deck-building time attempting to make it work, but with no success.

    Again, the lack of Myr really hurt, as I would have to play 18 lands to realistically support three colors (I also intended to play Tower of Calamities) Also, despite being in three colors, I was struggling to find playables because of the strangeness of my pool. After a solid core of about 16 cards, I could not figure out how the rest of the deck should look. The build didn’t have enough artifacts to support the metalcraft cards – Certarch, Drake, and Steed – only a dozen or so. The only other available artifacts would either have been off-color or kind of weak.

    But replacing the metalcraft cards would have resulted in maindecking so many slow cards that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stabilize the board before I died. My few remaining artifacts would be under the gun when I did play them, as it is the rare sealed deck that doesn’t have access to artifact removal. With all that, the payoff isn’t even that high, as I’d just be gaining mediocre cards like Stoic Rebuttal or Bleak Coven Vampires. And I would still need to play my pair of Riddlesmiths as creatures #2 and #3 that cost two mana or less.

    With about 2:30 left in deck-building, I went back to the U/W deck, as it was the one I was most comfortable with playing. It would never blow anyone away with its draws, but I didn’t see any other build I had having enough power to overcome the weaknesses it would have had.

    I wasn’t terribly impressed with how I had built my pool and considered my chances of top 8 to be pretty low. The only nice thing I could say about my deck is that my card selection would allow me to see more of my good cards than my opponent would, even if they weren’t as strong. But with almost no removal or bombs I had to count on my opponent not having their own plan work out, which is far from a reliable plan for winning six rounds.

    138 players, 8 rounds before top 8. Rather than a blow by blow, I’m going to offer a couple notes on each match where I feel it most appropriate. If there was a particularly interesting game state, I’ll attempt to communicate it.

    Round 1 – Brittney Pone

    1-0 (2-0)

    She was playing G/B Infect. In game one I was worried about a Hand of the Praetors, but on the last turn before I would attack her for lethal damage, I bounced the Hand. That meant she did not have enough mana to cast the Hand and the four drop infect creature she drew that turn that would have killed me. In both games, she played a Putrefax, and it was tapped each time before attackers were declared.

    While the updates to the card store (Millenium Games and Hobbies) had made it look a lot nicer, the room we are playing in has little ventilation or climate control, so I made my first of many trips out to my car to sit and listen to music while waiting for the next round.

    Round 2 – Andre Segarra

    2-0 (2-0)

    I made things a little chippy when I got myopic about the rules during Game 1. We then debated the merits of playing Magic competitively between games, and it seemed to annoy him that I took the game a lot more seriously than he did. In game two he played a Geth, but I bounced it with Lumengrid Drake, which meant it was one turn too slow. I set up a turn where I could attack for lethal, but botched it when I used all of my tap and bounce effects , not saving one to negate a flying blocker he had from his onboard Flight Spellbomb (stolen from my graveyard with Geth). Luckily, I had enough spells in reserve that I could refill the board and make another, successful lethal attack.

    Afterward, he fliped over his Hoard-Smelter Dragon and two Turn to Slag, which were uncastable off of his single Mountain.

    Round 3 Joseph Irvin

    2-1 (1-2)

    For the first time in the tournament I was just overpowered. Honestly, I was surprised it had taken this long. Between a Myrsmith, two Darksteel Axes, and a Molten-Tail Masticore, I was not able to offer any meaningful defense. I won game two when he missed his third land drop on the play. That involved me taking a risk that backfired when I playing a Ghalma’s Warden before I had metalcraft, and was then punished when he drew a Swamp for his Grasp of Darkness. Luckily, I was not punished for that outcome, and ended up overwhelming him before he could stabilize the board. I then lost game three after I ended up enough early damage that I was forced into chump block before I could start looping my Razor Hippogriff and Neurok Replica.

    Round 4 – Nicholas Patnode

    3-1 (2-1)

    Something funny happened at the start of game one. Nick played Spikeshot Elder, then Darksteel Axe, and I did not have Arrest in hand. He lacked a second red early though, and was eventually forced to keep playing spells to keep up on the board. At 2 life, I played a Trigon of Rage to get him from 10 life exactly the turn before I would have died in a game I couldn’t figure out how I was going to win after turn two. Game two I didn’t have such good fortune though. An early Arc Trail set me very far back, and additional removal prevented me from defending at all. I took 5+ damage several turns in a row, to give you an idea.

    Nick had a fast start in the decider after I put him on the play, with two early Snapsail Gliders. I put out a Hippogriff, then traded a Neurok Replica for one of the Gilders when he double blocked. That allowed me to gain air superiority, and despite him playing his Arc Trail, I whittled down his life total quickly. On his last turn, he resignedly said, “one time” before he drew a blank, conceded, and flipped over his deck that featured a 2nd Arc Trail, Contagion Engine, and a Sunblast Angel.

    Round 5 – Josh Lombino

    4-1 (2-1)

    We split the first two games while he averaged 1.5 Skinrenders cast. Game three was dominated by my Riddlesmith. We traded numerous creatures, but the Riddlesmith allowed me to keep applying pressure, even though I lost two creatures to a metalcraft’d Dispense Justice. I held a Strata Scythe that would represent lethal damage, but wanted to wait for the coast to be clear. On a late turn, he thought for a while, read Livewire Lash, then attacked with his only creature. I took it. After combat, he Instill Infection’d my Riddlesmith, and I simply dealt the two to him. He then was dead on board, regardless of the Scythe.

    Round 6 – Evan Halstead

    5-1 (2-0)

    Evan is actually a celebrity at the University of Buffalo as one half of a pair of twins featured in a poster in the basement of Capen Hall. He had a powerful deck, but I kept two low land draws with a Riddlesmith, neither Smith died, and I slowly ground him out in spite of a heap of removal. Both times, he got me into single digits, but I “locked” him with Razor Hippogriff and Neurok Replica. As I crawled back above double-digit life, I was able to start attacking with the Hippogriff, and soon after equipping it for extra damage. He never found a way to deal with the Hippogriff in either game and eventually died to it.

    Round 7 – Royce Walter

    6-1 (2-0)

    Royce and I had been introduced by a mutual acquaintance before the tournament began, so we were disappointed we had to play each other. Royce was probably more disappointed as he ended up flooding in game one while I was able to trigger Riddlesmith multiple times. I pulled very far ahead while he did nothing: he drew two thirds lands in spite of removing four with a Clone Shell.

    In game two, after I passed turn two with no play, he traded a Fume Spitter for my Vedalken Certarch. I’d like to say I was holding a Riddlesmith, but I was just lucky enough to draw it. He played an Acid Web Spider that jammed me up to a degree, but I drew enough extra cards that I was able to make it a non-factor even without drawing Arrest. First, a Lumengrid Drake got it out of the way, then a Neurok Replica, then finally a Tumble Magnet let me fly over and into the top 8.

    Round 8 – Andrew Noworaj

    6-1-1 (ID)

    As soon as I sat down, Andrew politely offered the draw. I gratefully (and also hopefully politely) accepted.

    I chatted a bit with the other people entering the Top 8 while I watched a player I know named Ken Tober take on Alex Bertocini. Though they were both very likely to make top 8, Ken wanted to play, and dispatched Alex very quickly. While I admittedly have held it against people in the past, you can’t make someone draw if they want to play a game of Magic. But in this case, it just made very little sense to me. I suppose it did work out in my favor though, as at the very least, Alex appeared to be a better player than I am, while I wasn’t sure about Ken.

    I felt pretty calm going into the Top 8 draft. To my left was Shaun Doran, an acquaintance who was likely the most accomplished player in the draft with a GP Finals finish, but aside from him I did not recognize any of the other players as having any big finishes. However, the draft ended up being a lot more challenging than I thought. I simply was way out of shape on drafts done under this level of rules enforcement, and was not prepared to keep track of the cards I selected in my head while managing the signals I was giving and receiving and also evaluating the pack itself. I had practiced a lot in the 8-4 queues, but by about halfway through pack two I felt pretty lost.

    I began the draft with a Sylvok Replica, with the next best card in the pack being a Plague Stinger. I then took a Chrome Steed and a Silver Myr, then opted to take Tangle Angler, Bellowing Tanglewurm, and Sylvok Lifestaff. I had passed a pair of Carapace Forgers in the first couple of packs that I hoped to wheel. While they did not come back to me, I did get an Untamed Might and a Tel-Jilad Defiance, which left me thinking I’d have an opportunity at an infect deck for pack two.

    Pack two started off well with a Skinrender, but veered off course when I second picked an Arc Trail, then further still when I was passed a Spikeshot Elder third. I simply could not ignore a card of that power level, and given that my infect plan had not shaped up at all, I figured I should try for a red/green metalcraft deck. Unfortunately, I just was not able to figure out what the people around me were drafting. Pick six featured an Arrest, a Glint Hawk, and a True Conviction. Pick 8 there was a Corpse Cur. I managed to only get a few mediocre cards for my deck: Panic Spellbomb, Ferrovore, and Strider Harness.

    Pack three bailed me out a bit. I opened a Trigon of Corruption, then got passed a pack with Darksteel Axe and… Venser. Seeing that the person on my right ended up in G/W, that is unbelievable. But I was in for a bigger shock when the third pick still had a Carnifex Demon. I then got a Shatter, a Horizon Spellbomb, a Copper Myr, and an Instill Infection, but also got some filler cards that I was sadly in need of such as Flameborn Hellion and Blistergrub. Sadly, even getting those winners late left me a few cards short. I had to make due with this deck.

    I did not play the Glimmerpost listed on the Wizards website. Corpse Cur and Golden Urn are concessions to the fact I wanted more artifacts, and one of them ideally had to be a creature. I could have played a Vector Asp instead, but preferred to skip it.

    Round 9 – Dean Bilz

    7-1-1 (2-0)

    Hopefully I can speak on behalf of Dean when I say his deck was not good. I imagine the strange signals in the draft affected most people’s decks at the table. Still his creatures included Ezuri’s Archers, two Auriok Replicas with no obvious Metalcraft cards besides a Barrage Ogre, and two Bloodshot Trainees with only one observed method of pumping them (it turned that he had two). With such a mediocre group of attackers, he was unable to pressure me sufficiently before I drew my bombs to win each game. In game two, we had the unusual situation of him hitting me with 3-4 creatures at a time while he dealt 1-2 damage thanks to Trigon of Corruption, which I eventually negated with my Golden Urn.

    Round 10 – Ken Tober

    8-1-1 (2-1)

    Ken is from Buffalo like me, so we had battled a few times in the past. Our semifinals match was at the same table, but I was not able to see much of his deck except for a Volitions Reins.

    Game one I play Carnifex Demon into what I presume is a counterspell because I don’t want to wait until he has Reins available; he doesn’t have the counterspell either, as it turns out. We traded attacks between the Demon and his Sky-Eel School and Darkslick Drake, while I waited to remove the counters to prevent him from adding additional creatures to the board because I had nothing else in hand or on board anyway. However, I fail to draw anything else of use, and am forced to use one counter, than the other to slow his offense. A couple turns later he draws the Reins for the Demon, and I’m forced to concede.

    Game two ended up revolving around two of what were objectively the worst cards in my deck. On turn 1 I played Golden Urn, and on turn 3 I played Blistergrub. The ‘grub didn’t die, so I started attacking with it, adding on a Sylvok Lifestaff a couple turns later. Humorously, the Urn was also working to keep my afloat by undoing some of the damage I was taking from a Darkslick Drake. The damage was reduced even more when I used Fume Spitter to shrink the Drake (gaining 3 from the Lifestaff), and I eventually was one turn away from killing Ken with the Grub with him at 5 life, as I held an Arc Trail. Unfortunately he drew his Volition Reins, and I thought my tournament was about to end.

    Instead, clinging on at 6 life, I drew Carnifex Demon! That not only allowed me to neutralize his entire team, but let me kill my Ferrovore for extra life to barely allow me to survive, after additional attacks, at 2. The board was at this point down to my Demon versus his withered fliers. I again lucked out when I drew out of the stalemate first with Spikeshot Elder. He didn’t draw an answer, and I burned him out next turn thanks to my pile of equipment and the Arc Trail.

    This game was an incredible grind, and winning when I’d been so close to the edge energized me, and I felt I had a psychological edge going into game three. We may never know if I did have that edge though, as Ken flooded considerably while I drew several hits, including Skinrender and Trigon of Corruption. He was so flooded he was forced to steal the Skinrender with Volition as it was beating him to death, but that just meant I was able to safely play my Carnifex Demon that I’d been holding back. Two attacks with the demon later and I was into the finals.

    Round 11 – David Pargh

    9-1-1 (2-0)

    I have a brief moment of elation when he says he wants to split, but he’s just teasing me. I’m really just raring to go though: after winning the last match I feel unbeatable. I’m incapable of qualifying the idea of momentum, so I’m not sure how much I was helped or harmed by my good mood. But if you had to pin me down, I’d say winning such a close match and being pumped up benefited me more than my opponent sitting outside the room likely doing nothing late on a Sunday night, hours from home.

    I win the roll and draw, and keep a modest six card hand plus one Golden Urn. I play the Urn and he comments that it’s actually good against him. That seems to be born out by the Vulshok Replica, Necrogen Censer, and multiple Panic Spellbombs he plays. He’s stalled on three lands though and is forced to cycle the Spellbombs away after I kill his Replica. We trade hits for a bit, but his deck really is focused on burning me out it seems, and the Urn may be legitimately harming him. He spends some Galvanic Blasts on my creatures and tries for a Bleak Coven Vampires (I Shatter an artifact in response), but use the Urn anyway to go from 7 to 16. Eventually I use Darksteel Axe to create favorable trades, take over the board, and win comfortably.

    Game two, I simply played too many good cards. My Chrome Steed ate a Shatter, which meant the Trigon of Corruption that followed was safe. Carnifex Demon received two Galvanic Blasts, but that just meant my other creatures were safe. I never had to play the Spikeshot Elder I’d been holding since early in the game, even instead opting for the “stylish” Exsanguinate kill.

    Sitting in an empty store at midnight on Monday morning was not what I had intended, but it was necessary for winning the PTQ. I did wonder a bit if I was benefited a bit in terms of endurance; the short traveling distance I’d had plus past experience with late round events seemed to benefit me, as by comparison my opponents were mentioning their own fatigue. Still, I felt strange as I got on the road back home. I had in effect won my Pro Tour, as I don’t really imagine I’ll succeed at the next level of play. But I can still find pride in what I’ve accomplished, and perhaps joy in proving myself wrong.

  • PTQ Gravesend Report *1st*

    Hey there again kids, and welcome to another PTQ report.

    This time we’re headed to Gravesend for the PTQ, with a similar cast of characters. The housemate Ray is again driving, so I’m again mising the lift and the best seat in the car. We arrive safe and sound despite typical GPS shenanigans, and immediately it is obvious that this PTQ is much smaller than the previous PTQ, in Chesham. While that PTQ was 112 players, this time around we’ve only managed to get 42. Yeah, that is an tiny number; the smallest PTQ I’ve had the pleasure of playing in. Couldn’t exactly say why it is so small, but running good starts early.

    So we get down to business, and after playing pokemon through the player’s meeting, we end up with the following sealed pool:

    So, decent looking pool. Some things jump out at me, and after I sort into several piles (Colours + colour-specific artifacts, infect cards, metalcrafty-artifacts, regular artifacts) I can quickly eliminate the infect deck this time – all told, I have a mere 8 cards which say ‘infect,’ and I certainly don’t have a mass of black removal that would tempt me to try building infect anyway, or some kind of hybrid deck.

    Beyond that, it is pretty clear that I am going to be playing red here, with multiple good removal spells, and I’m always going to run all of Darksteel Axe, Tumble Magnet, Golem Artisan and the Contagion Engine – as an aside, during the car trip the question was posed, what ‘card do you most want to see in your card pool?’ and my glib-but-serious response was ‘an engine.’ I don’t mind which, Wurmcoil Engine or Contagion Engine, but that’s the one card (out of two) I want to see most. And, well, here I am with a Contagion Engine. Must be nice.

    The other cards which are begging to be played are the trio of Chrome Steeds, so I lay them out along with the three Myr I’ve got, and take a look at the handful of other possible artifacts I’ve got: the replicas (although the Vulshok Replica is obviously already in the deck), the Clone Shell, the Memnite, the Mindslaver.

    Then I look at my second colour, which is probably going to be white: I’ve got the Arrest, the Glimmerpoint Stag
    and the Indomitable Archangel that are always going to make a white deck, as well as several other options. Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and Grasp of Darkness is an option, but I feel like the white cards are just better – Skittles and the Angel are roughly comparable in that they’ll both probably kill in 3 hits; Skittles by himself and the Angel with help from my other monsters, and the two removal spells are also roughly equivalent. The dragon probably has the edge over the angel given it can regenerate, but the Glimmerpoint Stag is enough to make up my mind.

    I also toy with a blue/red deck, since in blue I’ve got 5 2-power evaders, but losing the removal spell and the big flyer don’t seem worth it, plus I end up playing an artifact or two less with the blue cards, which weakens the Chrome Steeds. In the end, I register this deck:

    The Grafted Exoskeleton is an option, but I’m not a fan of that card with no other source of infect. I understand the theory, since on nine of my creatures it is lethal in two attacks, but I don’t like the vulnerability to being blown out by a Shatter effect, and I don’t like the potential for it to be dead if I’m trying to kill them with damage. I also considered splashing the Sylvok Replica with a Forest and possibly the Horizon Spellbomb, but I wasn’t sure if it would ever be relevant, and I’m not a fan of the Spellbomb in non-green decks. Dispense Justice is another decent option; I think this card gets a bad rap despite being completely servicable, and is harder to play around than it looks – however, I’ve got a good removal suite and I’m hoping to be doing the attacking. However, I do side the Dispense in a couple of times.

    There are some questionable inclusions, too, and I’m completely willing to believe that I misbuilt here. I’m still not sure where I stand on Abuna Acolyte, it seems like it should be good, but it is a non-artifact that doesn’t attack and doesn’t kill anything, so I’m a bit wary of it, and I’m actually not a big fan of Clone Shell despite playing it here. The Neurok Replica might be a bit loose, too, but I wanted to play as many artifacts as I could justify, what with the three Steeds. I could also afford to shave a land, but I wanted to make sure I was able to cast the multiple 4-drops I’ve got.

    So then, let’s play some magic.

    Round 1 vs Andrew Kueh


    I’m pretty sure I won the roll and choose to draw; either way he went first, and when he takes a mulligan things look pretty for the home team. He is playing infect, but he is mana-screwed somewhat, and is using a Sylvok Lifestaff to avoid falling way behind. He isn’t able to mount any real offense, though, and I quickly punch him out with some dorks, aided ably by a Contagion Engine.
    Game two and he again elects to play, and this time he has a better start, getting some poison on me, and rebuying an Ichor Rats with a Corpse Cur. However, I get good value out of an Arc Trail and my creatures are good enough that I can beat him down all while playing around an Untamed Might or Virulent Strike.

    Round 2 Vs Jackie Ang


    I lose the roll here, and Jackie puts me on the play. Jackie has a fast start with a Lifesmith, some random dorks and a Darksteel Axe, gaining a bunch of life along the way. I assemble my defense with the Indomitable Archangel, Tumble Magnet and some dorks and begin attacking in the air, but Jackie has a Contagion Engine of his own to kill my team and put me further behind – I’m on 7 while he is on over 24, but not to worry: I have an Engine of my own! I don’t have any counters on the Tumble Magnet anymore, unfortunately, but I’ve got rid of his team, and a collection of assorted monsters, a spell or two, and when he misses with a last-ditch Cerebral Eruption, I get him down to dead.


    The second game starts awkwardly when I pile shuffle my deck and realise I’ve only got 39 cards. Super scrub, that’s me. Somehow I missed it when I piled before the first game, but I call a judge on myself now and what could be a gameloss (or dq if we try to just say nothing) is downgraded to a warning since I called it on myself – the lost card was a mountain, by the way. After that embarassing detour, game two actually starts. His turn one Spikeshot Elder is met with my Galvanic Blast, and he has to use Cerebral Eruption early on because I’ve got a Chrome Steed and friend menacing him. He mounts a decent offense with a pair of Darksteel Axes on a smattering of creatures, and he has a Rust Tick so my Contagion Engine and Tumble Magnet don’t do completely nasty things. However, I bait out untapping the Rust Tick by using all the counters on the Magnet; he suits the Tick up and I gladly trade off some random creature – then I untap and blink the Magnet with a Glimmerpoint Stag. In the end, I win because he is stuck on four lands with a bunch of fives in hand, and the Magnet plus Engine is tapping down his Myr each upkeep. Pretty lucky, since he apparently made a mistake on one turn by not using the Myr to cast a 5-drop pre-combat; I tapped the Myr in combat before going to the upkeep-tap plan and if he’d cast a 5 I’d have been tapping that instead, allowing him to cast the rest of his spells.

    Round 3 vs Eduardo Sajgalik


    Alright, confession time: I wasn’t super excited about playing in this PTQ, and it really hit me in this round. I’ve been in Europe since February and I was planning to go home early in January; if I win the PTQ I’m going to be in London for another month and then some, and the weather is really getting me down. On the other hand, I still want to play on the pro tour, so I should be playing in ptqs. Right here, though, I didn’t want to be playing magic.


    Game one I’m on the play, and I keep a hand I probably shouldn’t, before nasty stuff is done to me with Barrage Ogre, Neurok Replica and Nim Deathmantle.


    Game two I choose to draw, and again keep a hand that is a bit sketchy, and get punished pretty quickly. It didn’t help that my opponent is quite good at magic, and had a good deck, but with my mindset I almost certainly wasn’t going to win this round. Stupid, isn’t it?

    Round 4 vs Andrew Buchanan


    Game one, and I’m still not feeling like playing magic, and I again make a poor keep and do a bunch of nothing while getting my face smashed in. If he’d had regular creatures instead of a hasty Kuldotha Phoenix, my Contagion Engine might have got me back into it, but that’s no excuse. Three games in a row without dealing a single point of damage, and in hindsight I’m extremely embarrassed about my attitude.


    Game two, and this time I have a hand which is a legitimate keep, and while I’m still not keen on playing magic, I’m not playing like a retard. Perhaps the key moment is when he Trinket Mages for a Chimeric Mass before making it with X = 4, but I’ve got the Glimmerpoint Stag for the straight two-for-one, before assorted beasties take it home.


    Game three, and I snap out of my funk and decide that, hey, I’m here to play magic, stop being a donk, and actually focus. I wanted to win two weeks ago, and I still want to win now. I’m on the draw in this game, but I’ve got a fast offense with Chrome Steed and Indomitable Archangel, and while he has Chimeric Mass and a pair of Sylvok Lifestaffs, his mana is tight and he can’t leverage them very well at all. I’ve put him on the Kuldotha Phoenix based on his annoyance at not finding a sixth mana-source, and general disappointment with his Chimeric Mass, so I’m making sure not to just die to the hasty flier, but in the end I kill him from 12 by Arresting his blocker, sending in a 4/4 with a Darksteel Axe, the Vulshok Replica, and throwing the Replica for the final three points.

    Round 5 vs Mark Laily


    So here we are, win this and we can ID again, and I’m actually focused on my magic now.


    Game one he wins the roll and puts me on the play, but then proceeds to mulligan three times, while I’ve got the sick turn 3 Indomitable Archangel, turn 4 Chrome Steed, turn 5 Tumble Magnet, turn 6 Contagion Engine – in other words, I continue to run really good.


    Game two, and my recollection is pretty hazy, but I’ve again got some large creatures and he is stuck for mana – he has an Archangel of his own, but I still bash him down really quickly.

    Round 6 vs Jack Ho


    ID into top 8.

    The top 8 seems okay for a tiny PTQ, Jack Ho and myself are both repeating in the top 8 from last time in Chesham, and joining us are two of my swiss opponents, Andrew Buchanan and Eduardo, as well as Stephen Murray (forums user Jecht Murray), all strong players – the other three aren’t known to me and could just be ringers, or could be secret masters.
    The draft starts out very weirdly when after we’ve been seated and while the judge is getting the packs, one of the unknowns decides to make an announcement: “Hey guys, I’ve never drafted this before, so I want you all to know that I’m going to be forcing poison.” Um. Pretty sure you can’t do that there, but nothing much is said, and we get drafting.

    Things begin well when I open a Sword of Body and Mind, and a second pick Plague Stinger over Glint Hawk and Glint Hawk Idol is okay, possibly. I think ideally I want to be in poison, but pick three is mediocre and I grab an underwhelming Kemba’s Skyguard. Fourth pick is a Carrion Call, and I round out the pack with, well, not much of consequence except for an Untamed Might, a Revoke Existance and some random dorks. Going into pack two, and I’ve got a couple of infect cards, a couple of white cards, the mythic Sword, and not much else. I first pick a Plague Stinger, and take another pick two to make a trio, but the poison dries up and I realise that I’m not going to be draft poison, and that my deck isn’t looking so flash right now. A late-ish Sylvok Replica tempts me into green, and an Engulfing Slagwurm is exactly the kind of card that my mediocre deck is looking for: able to win games on its own, making up for my criminal lack of synergy. Pack three starts well with a Chimeric Mass, but mostly we fill out our deck with cards that are neither metalcraft nor infect.

    In the end I’m battling with this collection of cards, which seems better than the last top 8, at least:

    There really aren’t many options available to me here, either. I want 17 lands because of the Wurm, the Mass and the Might, and the only other cards I could be maindecking are Salvage Scout, Culling Dais or Loxodon Wayfarer, none of which seem better than what I’ve got in there.

    Quarterfinal vs Sean McVally

    He wins the die roll and elects to play, and plays a first turn Accorder’s Shield – my immediate thought is that he is one of those bad players who plays the Shield (or Mox Opal) before it can do anything, but then he plays a Glint Hawk. He has another Glint Hawk the next turn, and starts the beats, but I trade a Glint Hawk Idol for one of them while developing my board with a Carapace Forger, Sunspear Shikari and a Sylvok Lifestaff – but he has the Shield on his remaining Glint Hawk and so I can’t actually attack with my lifelinking, first-striking Shikari, all the while taking two a turn.


    I drop Molder Beast and Golem Artisan, but he gets a Grafted Exoskeleton onto a Bloodshot Trainee and murders my Golem. Revoke Existence deals with that, and the Molder Beast swings in, but Turn to Slag deals with it and the Lifestaff as well. I attack my two 2/2s into his 2/5 vigilance, and after he picks off the Carapace Forger, I cast and use Sylvok Replica to kill the Accorder’s Shield, taking down the Hawk in the process.


    He plays a Kemba, Kha Regent and gets in for two, then a third Glint Hawk, bouncing an irrelevant Golem Foundry, but has to trade it for the Sunspear Shikari since he’s only at five – and then I drop the Engulfing Slagwurm. He plays and blocks with a Vulshok Replica, and domes me down to 5, before untapping, and attacking me down to 3 – then casting Cerebral Eruption. I flip a Clone Shell and he wins, but attacking me first is really bad on his part since it just means he auto-loses if the Eruption misses.

    Game two starts of in a similar fashion to the first, as he again has Glint Hawk x 2, bouncing the Accorder’s Shield, but this time I’ve got a sideboard Wing Puncture in response to the equip, before equipping Sword of Body and Mind and connecting. He attemps to Turn to Slag, but the creature carrrying the sword is conveniently an Auriok Replica, which I sacrifice choosing his remaining Hawk – he promptly attacks with the Hawk for zero damage.


    I then put the sword on a wolf token, followed by a Molder Beast, and mill him out. I forget to take notes on his deck after milling him, though.

    Game three is looking a lot better for me when he doesn’t have a turn one Glint Hawk, while I’ve got Leonin Shikari with a Sylvok Lifestaff – he has a Shatter for the Lifestaff, but doesn’t have an answer for the Sword of Body and Mind that comes next, as well as the Molder Beast. He was also manascrewed, and did strange things like not tapping his Myr for mana before bouncing it with a Glint Hawk, which meant he couldn’t recast it that turn. I’m running really good, clearly.

    Semifinals vs Stephen Murray

    Game one and Stephen is on the play, opening with Copper Myr into Tangle Angler, while I’m going to the skies with Glint Hawk Idol and Kemba’s Skyguard – although the Angler combines with Trigon of Rage to eat the Skyguard – and a Trigon of Corruption is going to stop the Idol from taking him out alone. Luckily, I draw my Sword of Body and Mind and the Idol connects despite picking up a -1/-1 counter. I can’t attack with it again, though, so I just play and equip an Abuna Acolyte. We’re in a bit of a stalemate here as I can’t attack through his creatures and the Trigon is keeping my Idol grounded, while Stephen can’t really damage me.


    However, Stephen makes an ill-advised attack when my gang-block forces him to use the Trigon on his turn to keep his Tangle Angler alive, and so I can get in another time with the Idol on my turn, leaving him with a miniscule library, and the difficult task of dealing me 22 damage in a short time, all the while making sure I don’t get third attack in with my Sword. Some large creatures on my side of the table and he can’t get through, and mills out – and this time I take advantage of the Sword’s mill to take note of his entire deck, bar 3 unknowns.

    Game two, and Stephen again has the turn three Angler, while I’m again going to the skies, this time with Glint Hawk Idol and Snapsail Glider – a plan which doesn’t last long when he assembles a Wall of Tanglecord, followed by a… Wall of Tanglecord. My Molder Beast is matched by a Trigon of Corruption and a Perilous Myr, and Stephen can start grinding me out – but I draw my seventh mana-source and summon the Engulfing Slagwurm, which bumps into him and his creatures a couple of times, before I put 9 mana into a Chimeric Mass. I kill the Trigon pre-combat with a Sylvok Replica so he can’t put a counter on the Mass; forcing him to trade both Grasp of Darknes and Alpha Tyrannax for the Mass rather than just the Grasp, and the Wurm combines with a Golem Artisan to take me to the final.

    Final vs Eduardo Sajgalik

    Yup, that’s the guy who beat me in the swiss, and he had an easy quarterfinals since the fool who announced he was going to force infect got DQ’d for doing so, giving Eduardo the win. That said I don’t want to take anything away from Eduardo, since he’s drafted a very nice r/w metalcraft deck with multiple Shatters, Rusted Relics, smiths, along with a Hoard-Smelter Dragon at the top of the curve. Me, though, I’m a miser.

    Game one, and I get to play, while he takes a mulligan. He has a decent start with a pair of Glint Hawk Idols, but he is triggering them with Sylvok Lifestaff and Accorder’s Shield, not the most efficient use of mana. Meanwhile, I get down a Kemba’s Skyguard and Sunspear Shikari, pick off an Idol with Sieze the Initiative, before going big with a Molder Beast and putting him down to 12. He taps out for the Hoard-Smelter Dragon, but I’ve got the Untamed Might when he blocks, and he is too far behind to come back.

    Game two, his early plays include a Myrsmith and an Embersmith, but my offense is comprised of Sunspear Shikari, Snaspsail Glider and Sylvok Lifestaff, so his smiths aren’t terribly effective. He Shatters my Sylvok Lifestaff instead of my Glider, which I’m not sure about, and I get him down to 8. He has a Razor Hippogriff, but I’ve got Golem Artisan along with the Glider and a Clone Shell (imprinting a blank), and, in an anticlimax, he just can’t beat the Golem.

    Wow. I’ve won a PTQ.

    And, frankly, I’m really not sure what to take away from this PTQ; I know that my attitude in a couple of rounds was very poor, but when I was focused I was playing good magic (although obviously not perfect) – and some number of my wins could have been losses if my opponents hadn’t made mistakes, even though I was undeniably lucky all tournament long. I’m also not sure what to take away from the draft; I’m fairly sure I was just wrong with my picks early on, but I think I did a decent job of recognizing that what I was doing wasn’t working, and drafting the only deck I could, really. 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.

    Anway, thanks for reading, and see you in Paris, hopefully :)

  • Chesham PTQ Tournament Report

    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.

    Arrival at the ptq was courtesy of my housemate, Ray, who drove a car to Chesham, other occupants occupied the car. There were no memorable moments during an early morning car trip, obviously. Don’t expect any humour here.

    Get to the venue, give Grover a hug as is my wont, settle down to get my sealed pool. 112 players, larger than I’m used to but not huge by any means. Here is the collection of cardboard that ended up in my hands.

    So the first thing I notice about this pool is the Wurmcoil Engine, that there is a spicy little card. Then I do what I do, which is split the pool into 9 piles: 5 colours with colour-dependent artifacts, artifacts-that-care-about-artifacts, generic artifacts, the infect cards, and lands. Expect, well, this pool as no lands, and no artifacts that care about how many other artifacts I have, with the exception of Glint Hawk Idol – which I put in the white pile most of the time anyway. Oh I guess Throne of Geth also counts, but that’s a silly technicality because it goes in the poison deck, not the metalcraft deck. Technicalities count O_O

    So yeah, the metalcraft deck doesn’t seem to exist, as I have 4 cards with the word metalcraft on them, only one of which I want to play. The poison deck looks decent though, a reasonable number of infect guys, some strong equipment. Lacking a fraction in removal, but we can deal with that. This is the infect deck I lay out:

    Other cards that I considered in this build, but didn’t run:
    Accorder’s Shield and Bladed Pinions, which I dismissed because I didn’t want to run a 5th piece of equipment and the other options just seemed better because they boosted power. It might have been better to run the Shield over a Lifestaff or the Lash, though, I don’t know. I’m not a fan of the Pinions, though.
    Vector Asp: Even when I want more poison creatures, I’m not a playing this guy. I always seem like I have stuff to do with my mana, and a 1/1 infect isn’t even that exciting if I could afford to pay for his ability all the time.
    Horizon Spellbomb: I’m not a fan of this outside of deck’s with a splash – it seems like so much mana just to get a card + plus a land, and I don’t care about the artifact. Maybe I’m supposed to run it and a mountain to squeeze the Shatter in, but I still don’t like having a Horizon Spellbomb in my deck.
    Fume spitter #2: Sometimes this guy seems really good, so maybe we want the second. I’m not convinced that the second one is better than any of the other cards though.

    I also laid out this blue/white concoction, which had some more choices available to it:

    Here we could have been playing a few cards differently; the Battlegear can be run in this deck since it doesn’t just frag half my dudes, and the Abuna Acolyte might be good enough – I actually haven’t had a chance to play with this guy yet, or against it much, so I don’t have a firm evaluation. It seems like it should be good, but I keep on passing it or letting it waste away on the pine. I think it is just the combination of not being an artifact and not being a good attacker that sours me to the Acolyte. Auriok Edgewright is another option in this deck, but we don’t have a great deal of artifacts and he doesn’t even excite me that much when he does turn on. I’m also a fan of Seize the Initiative, but the same isn’t-an-artifact-can’t-attack makes me leave it out so often.

    In the end, I registered the infect deck but kept the Blue/white deck sleeved to side into, since I wasn’t sure which deck was best. In hindsight I think the infect deck was the wrong choice, but at the time I was kind of uneasy about playing a non-infect non-poison deck, and I felt like being on the infect plan game 1 would be a bit stronger. I expected more opponents to choose draw, and I think their maindecks are going to be worse against poison than against non-poison. That and the lowish number of creatures in the blue/white deck swayed my mind.

    Oh and obviously the poison deck had the awesome Tel-Jilad Fallen + Equipment combo, so we wanted to play that :P

    Now on to some actual matches, although bear with me as my memory is pretty bad and I don’t really have much incentive to remember these games, either.

    Round 1 Vs Raymond Wat

    aka My housemate who drove me here. The perfect start :headesk:

    I win the roll and elect to play, obviously. Did you really need me to tell you that? I get down some early poison guys and get Ray up to 7 poison counters relatively quickly, but he assembles Mimic Vat + Sylvok Replica and starts eating my stuff. He’s only about to bash me down to 15, though, before I get him with an end of turn Carrion Call, untap Blackcleave and swing with the team for the game.

    Game 2 I side into the blue/white deck since I’m already disenchanted with the poison list, plus I expect Ray to bring in some silly low-drops in an effort to increase his game against poison – while hopefully I’ll fly over for the win. Evidently something similar to that happens, as his life total appears to have dropped to zero. How lucky! I know I cast a Wurmcoil Engine at some point, but it was to earn the concession.

    Round 2 Vs Ed Payne

    I remember like, next to nothing about this round. First game he appears to have won the roll, elected to play (so much for my theory about opponents choosing to draw game one), and then he gets poisoned out while plinking me for one a turn.

    Game 2 I again side into the other deck, and quickly munch him with some 2-power flyers while he is manascrewed. Mise well :-/

    Round 3 Vs Richard Parker

    I win the roll and get the Sylvok Lifestaff -> Plague Stinger draw, which gets him to six poison pretty quickly. However, he has a Sky-Eel School so I decline to attack in the air in the hopes of forcing him to trade it for a ground-pounder, allowing me to get pack in there with the stinger. A pair of surprise Darksteel Sentinels eat my ground force, a removal spell takes out the Stinger, and I die in short fashion. Would have been interesting if I had forced the trade with my Stinger and his Eel when I had the chance since he would have taken much longer to kill me if he hadn’t still had the flier.

    Game 2 I elect not to side into the u/w deck, since I felt like the infect guys were better against the Sentinels, and the 2/2 fliers a tad unexciting against the 3/3 flier I saw. I do however take out the Perilous Myrs for a Lifesmith and the Accorder’s Shield, since I didn’t see anything worth killing with the Myrs, and they would be really hard to get killed anyway since he looked like he would be able to kill in the air. The game itself was an extremely protracted affair in which I got him up to 6 poison counters with early dudes, but he then gummed up the board with a Grand Architect making his creatures pretty big. He had a scary Invisimancer and Lumengrid Drake beatdown going, but I had Lifesmith and Lifestaff, and according to my lifepad I gained a total of 36 life via these two – which made the race really difficult for him. I had Throne of Geth to get him up to nine poison, but he had the Volition Reins to kill it, so I was forced to get him with a bunch of 1/1s I made with Trigon of Infestation (had three extra charge counters from the Throne) while gaining life by sending Lifestaff carrying insects on suicide missions – before I went with the end of turn Carrion Call, untap Grafted Exoskeleton + Equip to Lifesmith, swarm past for the last point of poison play.

    Coming into game three, it looked like time was going to be tight, so I sided into the blue/white deck since it seemed like the only one that could win quickly, additionally dropping the Trigon of Thought for the Barbed Battlegear. I did indeed have a fast draw, and was beating down with a Glint Hawk Idol that kept on picking up a Lifestaff and then dropping it, while conveniently stranding his Skinrender in hand. I had a disperse and volition reins, and I think I would have won a long game, but I went aggro with the reins, taking a 2/2 flier – which he skin-rendered. Fine by me, I guess, but he then had a sky-eel school as time was called, and I couldn’t get past it + chump-blocker before time expired. Awkward.

    Round 4 Vs Robert Bulton

    We start things off with my opponent winning the roll and again choosing to play. Poop. I don’t have a great start and he is gumming up the boarding with Wall of Tanglecord, Auriok Edgewright, Accorder’s Shield. I use my Wurmcoil Engine to kill some guys so that I can then get some poison going, and start to proliferate him with the Throne of Geth from 5 counters – but he draws the Revoke Existence. He then gets some evaders and I’m pretty clearly going to lose at some point since his defense is solid and I can’t ever block his guys, so I just scoop early-ish since I’m in the draw-bracket now. I know my opponent is slow, so I want as much time as possible.

    This game also involved the Play Of The Day in which my opponent equipped his Blistergrub with his Infiltration Lens… I guess he was worried I’d sacrifice all my swamps then block his guy O_O Or maybe he was just terrible. (He was just terrible).

    For the second game I switch into blue/white deck, since by now I’m convinced it is better, and I call a judge over to watch for slow-play. No more draws. He isn’t doing much, and I’ve got a Wurmcoil Engine and a Argent Sphinx bashing his face in – I ‘play around’ dispense justice by attacking with extra creatures, which I’ve now been told doesn’t work, obviously. He can just trade with the random extra creatures, then dispense my good guy(s) away at the end of combat. However, him being… not very good… my mistake doesn’t matter.

    In game three, I’ve again got the Argent Sphinx and some friends, while he is suck on one land. We’re running good I guess.

    Round 5 Vs Benjamin Twitchen

    I again get an opponent who chooses to play, although this one is made immediately obvious when he runs out a turn one Vector Asp. Poison mirror it is! He has removal for my first poison guy, but I’ve got a Perilous Myr gumming things up a bit and he can never afford to waste mana giving his guy poison in the first few turns. He has Heavy Arbalest equipped and running, but I get a couple of Tel-Jilad Fallen, and he doesn’t have any non-artfacts, so it takes him a couple of turns to kill them with non-artifact creatures – they each get in for one hit, although the second one shouldn’t have connected in my opinion, and should have instead been traded for a Contagious Nim. Then, with me at 5 poison and him at 6, he attacks for the ‘win’ instead of playing a bit more conservative with the arbalest, and loses to Carrion Call, chump block one creature, equip the left-over insect with Lifestaff and Lasher, get in. He definitely should have attacked for 2 poison less than the win and then equipped the Arbalest to an untapped infector. I’m starting to see the advantage of being in the draw bracket.

    Game two, same old story – I sideboard into the u/w deck. I have Wurmcoil while he is mana-screwed, and I have the Halt Order for his Rust Tick. Must be nice? It is nice.

    Round 6 Vs Aston Ramsden

    I’m paired-up into a 5-0 now, since I’m the only 4-0-1 in the field. I now a little about this guy’s deck since he beat Grover in the previous round, and more importantly I know from Grover that he isn’t a very good player.

    Game 1, another opponent who chooses to play. I get some early poison in, but I’m slowed down because I have to waste a turn Slice in Twaining his Sword of Body and Mind – better than not having the Slice, though. I get him up to 6 poison, but he has Contagion Clasp for the Plague Stinger, then has it proliferating onto a Tumble Magnet to deal with the Plague Stinger again when I get it back with a Corpse Cur. This is slowing him down a bit, but he has an Auriok Edgewright with double-strike, which combined with the Tumble Magnet and a Barbed Battlegear means that I can’t attack with many guys without just losing on the attack back. The crucial moment of the game comes a bit later when he has a Molder Beast and a Sylvok Replica – he decided to put the Battlegear on the Beast, which is just wrong since I have a Livewire Lash on my Perilous Myr. Anyway, he attacks with his 9/2 trample, and I pretend to miscount how much damage I’ll take if he sacs the Replica, and block with just that Myr – thanks again to Charlie for letting me know that my opponent isn’t very good. Obviously he counts the damage himself, realizes it is lethal, and tries to kill me by sacrificing the Replica on the Livewire Lash – so I target my own Perilous Myr with Instill Infection, trigger the Lash killing the Molder Beast, Myr dies and kills the Auriok Edgewright, and I draw a card. I still don’t have much offense since I’d been forced to chump with some guys, but this buys me ample time to find a Throne of Geth and kill him with Proliferate.

    Game 2 and we again decide the blue/white deck is best – although my opponent doesn’t even touch his sideboard and I’m pretty sure the surprise value is completely meaningless. Either way, I have a mana-tight but really fast start with Myrsmith, Glint Hawk Idol, Lifestaff, and I’ve got Disperse and Auriok Replica in reserve so I’m not worried about much – although I forget to play around the Sunblast Angel which Grover told me about. Being a miser has its advantages, though, and he doesn’t draw it.

    Round 7 Vs Eugene Hwang

    ID into top 8 :)

    Top 8 Draft

    I take Embersmith pick 1 over Glint Hawk and Glint Hawk Idol, which I guess is correct but I feel like red just doesn’t do much in this format. Don’t know. Pick 2 I take Galvanic Blast over Arrest and Shatter, and I basically round out the pack with a bunch of unexciting creatures. Pack two I first pick Ezuri’s Brigade since I don’t really have a second colour and it is a nutty card, plus there wasn’t much me – but I get a gift Carnifex Demon pick 3 and just decide black is the way to go. The rest of that pack and the entirety of pack 3 can be summarized as Grasp of Darkness, Arc Trail and a bunch of mediocre creatures and a bit of equipment, mostly. Not a very exciting deck, but I don’t think anyone had an exciting deck.

    Here is the deck I registered:

    Yeah that is a lot of unexciting creatures that I’m planning to turn sideways, but I have some power-boosting equipment, a smattering of removal and a nice bomb.

    Cards in the sideboard which I didn’t play: Furnace Celebration; because I didn’t think I had enough sacrifice effects and because I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with this card in draft before where I’ve found it really hard to actually use effectively.
    Flameborn Hellion and Ogre Geargrabber, as some bigger guys to finish them off – but I felt like I would be better off trying to swarm with little guys holding equipment than I would by playing another six.

    Quarterfinals Vs Rob Wagner

    I’m off to a good start when I 1-in-36 him, topping his 11 with my 12. On the play I keep a hand with Sylvok Lifestaff, Perilous Myr, Iron Myr, Blade-Tribe Berserkers, Turn to Slag, Swamp, Mountain. I have the three artifacts in play on turn three, and if I hit my third land I can get the Berserkers out there and start going to town – I miss, though, and he has an instill infection for my Myr. I get my land after that, and run out a pair of Moriok Reavers in consecutive turns, but he has Slice in Twain, Skinrender, Moriok Reaver and then Asceticism, and even if I’d found my Carnifex Demon he had the Flesh Allergy for it.

    Game 2 and I board in a pair of Blistergrubs for the Turn to Slag and a Moriok Reaver – he showed me that he drew a second Asceticism as a joke in game 1, so I knew that the Turn to Slag was going to be pretty unexciting – and I hadn’t seen any equipment either. I’m on the play, and I punt by keeping a hand I should always always mulligan – 5 lands, two unexciting spells, and when five of my top seven are lands I’m gone. A carnifex demon at some point would have got there if he never drew flesh allergy, but I didn’t it and I’m out of the PTQ.

    I put the horrible mulligan decision down to tiredness, since I didn’t even realize I should have taken the mull until I’d gotten home and had a cup of tea. The entire trip home I was just so bummed out about drawing so many lands and losing like that, it took a clear head to spot my mistake.

    So yeah, 12 packs of Scars and some lessons are what I got out of that day, the most important lesson of which is, I think, make sure I can maintain focus in the top 8. The solution is more water during the day (had enough to eat) and probably a cup of coffee before the top 8 if I can manage it. So yeah, pretty disappointing PTQ on the whole; I’ll just have to win the next one :)