There and Back Again

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So, it’s been a while. My last blog post here was really a cathartic exercise in managing tilt in a variance laden game. The same thing applies but taking a break from blogging and focusing on the mental part of my game did help.  I am glad to report that better results followed and I was in general less tilty than before, small victories!

Then I relapsed a bit. As mentioned in that article, it’s always a fight.  ;-)

The problem I find is I’ve reached a certain level of skill, a higher understanding of the strategy of the game but I am lacking it would seem to push through to a higher level of success. This isn’t unusual though. A lot of gamers, even very good ones, can experience this issue and a lot of times the cure is more time investment or a mixture of playing with better people in a team or any number of other items. Pro magic players and certainly pro poker players have written hundreds of thousands of articles and books on this very thing.  I’ve read a lot of it, I was quite deep into poker for a while, certainly reaching a decent success at a regional level and compared to the average player I held my own. That fell off though and led me where I am, Magic.

Over the last while I have been starting to look at what I am putting into the game.  I do a lot of reading, review, analysis and the like. What I am finding is that I’m reaching the point where what I’m putting in, isn’t in parity with what I’m getting out. The reality I have come to of course is that with my age, professional career, the wife, kid all that great stuff that I just won’t reach significantly higher, at least right now.  That is OK though, I just have to come to terms with it. What this does mean though is that I’ll have to take a look come this Summer and try to come to grips with just how much I want to put into this game. Magic is fantastic and it has consumed me and provides a community and strategic game second to none. Most importantly it provides a useful abstraction from my day to day work and allows me to detach from that quite effectively.

So is this me quitting? No, I like the game to much for that. What I likely will do though is roll back on the competitive play, just FNM, pre-release, standard stuff like that. Grand Prix if they are close and others are going, just try to keep it more casual with the eye that down the road maybe I can get back on the horse and try and be more competitive.

I managed over the last year to finish second in Planeswalker Points in our store, only dropping out of 1st at the end of the season during that previous rough patch.

That is pretty pleasing to me given how long I’ve actually been playing “real” Magic.  If you read my earlier blogs you saw that I am qualified for the World Magic Cup Qualifier again this year and mercifully it is being held in nearby Burnaby on April 6th. Now I know the people that will show up and my track record at really long magic tournaments isn’t great but I am hoping for a good result and have been prepping already. We thankfully have 5 or 6 players from our store that are also qualified, among obviously the best and most consistent players at our store and we are starting to do a little testing and deck discussion. 3-4 of us are also looking to make the trip so having that team support and additional testing should help us all.

As for play, not a lot to really discuss. I had a list of things I was going to blog about over the past couple months but issues with the blog site back end kept me from posting them right away. The issues remain so the timeliness of the posts is lost and moreover I just wasn’t into spending an hour or so writing an article and then spending 3-4 hours troubleshooting it after, so that contributed to the gaps in posting.

Work has once again picked up to a point where I can’t add much, nor have I been playing an exceptional amount.  What I can say is that I do dig Gatecrash limited, certainly far more than Return to Ravnica which  largely disliked. Not as disliked as Avacyn Restored but still not high on my list of sets drafted to date.

At the Gatecrash pre-release I went 5-0 with a silly Boros deck that lost all of 1 game all day, my follow up with Simic earned me a few packs and then the last sealed with Gruul was a colossal fail due to a couple of tough back to back Orzhov matches.

After this we had our large Gottacon gaming convention locally in Victoria. This is always a great event for the area as it brings gamers of all types together and we have 3 days of magic events to take in, some as large as 160 people which is a good size for the area. I did really well in one of the FNM events, going 3-1 with a Jund Aggro list that I adore and had middling to OK success in the sealed and drafting over the weekend. Modern to close out the event was fun and earned me another 3-1 finish. I unfortunately wasn’t able to run back the Game Day victory, I did manage to Top 8 the one I played, at the other store in town, my schedule not allowing me to attend my local store’s event.

After this it’s been mainly FNM with a few drafts in there. For the first time in a very long time there were 3 whole weeks where I played sum total zero minutes of Magic. I know I can’t quit because this was excruciating  Work travel that put me too far from any stores and a family escape to Disneyland and no time to draft on MTGO left me in that spot.

Thankfully I still kept up on what was going on and did OK upon return with Jund Aggro but recognizing that the WMCQ was coming I started trying different decks at my store to see what might be a good fit, and a good solution to the rampant aggro in my meta. I to date have mainly focused on Prime Speaker Bant and Naya Mid and Naya “Not so Mid” which average if not completely frustrating int eh case of last Friday, results. I absolutely love Naya but it’s not loving me back right now so I am looking across the board at other options. As part of my testing process and to provide other decks for the WMCQ testers to try out I have the following sleeved up.

  • Jund Aggro (list to follow)
  • Junk Re-animator
  • Bant Auras
  • Boros Aggro

So far the Junk Re-animator deck has been most surprising, it just seems to win games it has no business doing. The question mark of course for this deck is what about all the hate? It being so popular and competitive right now you would think it will just be hated out. It would seem though that the decks build is good enough to win without the reanimation part. I’m not sure I want to take that particular weapon to the WMCQ but it has risen up my list of potential targets.

That said my favorite is still Jund Aggro, here is largely what I have been running to date with slight tweaks here and there over the weeks I ran it. I can say in actual competition that this deck has been putting up near 60% win percentage which is pretty good. I haven’t ran it for a few weeks but it has been a very solid deck. Credit to Smi77y on MTGO/Twitter, the guy came up with this foundation weeks before the Burning Tree Emissary builds and much like his other decks it is quite competitive!

Jund Aggro by Shawn – Core deck by Smi77y

The deck is very quick, not the fastest mind you, it still has a hard time racing mono red lists. What it can do if it keeps pace is drop slightly bigger dudes that largely make combat incredibly awkward.  It then stabilizes and uses Bonfire of the Damned, Thundermaw Hellkite or Falkenrath Aristocrat to provide reach that the Naya Blitz and Mono Red lists can’t handle. Given it’s slightly bigger size it also has a better mid range story than most aggro decks.

It may be this deck is in the wrong point in the Standard cycle at this exact moment but I expect it to be very strong down the stretch before Dragon’s Maze changes up Standard again. The current sideboard is focused mainly on providing more removal in recognition of mid range and ramp decks that this deck will have issues with if they delay long enough to stabilize. Generally speaking though the number of cards that get side boarded in are rarely more than 2 or 3 in any given match-up.

So that’s it for this week, Easter weekend will hamper testing for the WMCQ the following weekend but hopefully the guys that plan to attend can get together for a little more testing before the event. Baring significant comfort with other decks it may just be Jund Aggro for me given my seat time with it. As I’ve said before having familiarity with a given deck can provide a greater edge than sleeving something just slightly more powerful that you are unfamiliar with.

My next update will likely be the WMCQ results. After that, who knows? Whether I carry on with the blog will largely depend on what transpires in the next couple months. After that it may just be occasional posts on something I find worth talking about comes up.  It will very likely be the end or the casually competitive blogging for the time being.

Thanks for reading!

Twitt

Magical Frustration

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I’m a tilty player.  I have been for a VERY long time.  This goes back to my competitive nature even as a youngster.  I compete hard and especially in gaming, one of my stronger suits, I have always struggled with losing.  This generally didn’t matter much in most of my gaming endeavors because if I lost and vented it was typically just with friends and family in casual gaming, it also didn’t happen very often.

I’ve spent pretty much the last decade in some form or another playing some kind of competitive gaming.  Going back to my time in Calgary I got caught up in the poker boom and did pretty well in the local scene.  I think it was during this time in poker that my tilt really managed to manifest itself but at the same time I became aware of its presence and effect.  Poker being the game it was/is and in the height of its popularity has lead to a lot of articles from people of all walks talking about issues that affect people in that game.  A lot of this has been parroted in magic articles, especially in the past few years. Many poker players now play magic or vice versa.  Tilt doesn’t care what game you play, when you are involved in a competitive game with a larger than small degree of variance it will happen.

Defining tilt can be a bit awkward because it manifests itself in different ways for different people.  Players can get reserved, shouty, snappy and most often be silently frustrated, blood pressure on the rise.  The funny thing is that people might relate tilt with the shouty, snappy kind of tilt. Most often however, the common type is the one where the tilt is just subtly causing you to play differently or make mistakes you normally wouldn’t.

Tilt can creep up on anyone at any time, just the wrong cycle of events can cause players to snap into one tilt state or another. While I don’t have the answers it’s something I’ve worked on and will have to work on for a long time being the way I am wired.  There are a few things you can do try and control it if you realize it’s on its way.

  • Get up and walk away, if at all possible. Often you are stuck in your match and can’t leave when playing magic. In poker you could get up and skip a few hands, walk around the room or go outside.  It may be if you get in this spot between games  during a magic match that just putting down your deck, standing up and having a stretch, followed by a few deep breaths will allow you to refocus.
  • Drop and do something else.  Silly as it may sound, it just might not be your night and sometimes if you are tilting out really hard it may just be better to call it a night and go and play casual or simply do something else entirely.
  • Pragmatically review what happened.  If it is post match or even post game within a match. Take a minute to actually review what went down that game.  Was it out of your control?  Was your keep that loose?  Should you have blocked etc.  Sometimes it may hurt to admit where you did something stupid, you may be able to resolve to avoid that spot in the next game or match.

As I’ve said I am hardly the paragon of tilt management but just recognizing when you are tilting can be enough to help you get a handle on it and hopefully recover.

So why chat about tilt?  It’s been a frustrating few weeks of standard magic.  I have largely avoided draft as per my decision in an earlier article but constructed hasn’t been going as well as I’d like.  The last three FNM I’ve gone 3-2 and while that’s a winning record and all I never felt like the games were going the way I’d like.  A lot of losses were due to stupid stuff or situations out of my control.

Spoon in a Knife Fight

The FNM before Christmas I decided that after an aborted week with Naya I needed to run a B/R Midrange list.  I had seen the decks with Hellhole Flailer and went, yeah I love that card in limited, and it should be great here!  I can easily say my modifications to the existing R/B zombies list were a mess.  I completely broke the curve and mana flow of the deck.

I still managed to win 3 rounds, mostly off the back of either multiple Ash Zealots or unanswered Thundermaw Hellkite.  Fast burny decks still get there as we know.  The whole night was just a grind with the deck just behaving really inconsistently all night. I think the sub optimal deck construction really hampered my run in addition to the decks natural streakiness.  I don’t have the exact list but it was pretty close to this with the Rakdos Cackler coming out and  Geralf’s Messengers tagging in with a few extra swamps to make up for the mostly red mana base.

If you have the benefit of watching Gerry vs. Brad videos on Starcity Games Premium, Brad’s recent match against Gerry’s Bant control deck was a pretty good mirror for my evening.  It just to me doesn’t feel as overtly powerful as the B/R Zombies list, nor as lightning quick as the newer Mono Red lists.  It can execute some pretty powerful turns but it just doesn’t seem right, maybe it’s just not my kind of build.

OK well bad choice aside I could recognize what I did wrong with the deck, back to the zombies we go!

Dragon One Time…. Again… Anytime Now!

Last FNM of 2012 and I was equipped with one of the best decks in the format, a finely tuned B/R Zombies list.

As you can see a good representation of the build.  My only real changes were the addition of the Dreadbore and Ultimate Price which I felt given what I was seeing at the store would be a good fit for the deck without giving much up.

This deck did open really well, I went 2-0 eeking out a couple wins off of a top decked Thundermaw Hellkite or Falkenwrath Aristocrat.  It really can struggle against control decks or decks like Omnidoor Thragfire with their Fog, a favorite of my round 2 opponent Steven G. The upside to the deck though is the plethora of haste creatures, it can really steal wins or get back in after a Supreme Verdict.

So feeling pretty good about my 2-0 / 4-0 open I decided to open my mouth and say “I haven’t played against any B/R with this deck yet”.  Enter in Neil, running a very close mirror of my deck.  Neil has been running it for weeks and has it down pretty pat.  We ended up having a good three game match, frustratingly ending for me when my deck decided in a pretty close game 3 to just stop drawing anything of use.  Neil curved out and sent me to the 2-1 bracket.

The next round, right on queue, another R/B list but one still being tested by a newer player to the store, Jesse.  Jesse has a pretty good attitude about the game and play and he’s always fun to play against.  Despite his deck being quite fast the speed and finishing power of my build took the day and put me in range of a solid finish.

Enter the Frustration

Justin T, a returning player to magic was my matchup in the last round.  Justin for whatever reason just seems to have my number regardless of our matchup.  He’s a solid player that has gotten the breaks against me to date and I’m sure we’ll have some good matches in the future.

Quick question for you, what happens when you take an aggro deck and give it nothing but land draws?  The answer is an opponent at 2 life and you loosing from 20 health and that seething feeling creeping into your brain.  This happened Game 1 of my match with Justin.  Game 2 was very similar, his Jund list stabilizing him at 4 but my deck running completely out of gas.

He was exposed at 2 and at 4 life and both times my list decided to not show any of the burn or a Thundermaw Hellkite or Falkenwrath Aristocrat that would instant win, instead providing me with a useless Turn 8 Gravecrawler.  Such is the game though right?  This deck does often live and die with the top deck haste creature and it seems that variance can be pretty brutal if the cards aren’t falling your way.

The 3-2 and a mid pack finish welcomed me into its warm embrace and I shake my head wondering why I had to face Justin right then.  This is of course wrong think.  Justin is a good player, as am I.  I could have just as easily had the same loss to a lesser deck or player.  Bad draws and a matchup that wasn’t as favorable as my initial assessment certainly hurt.  Justin drawing well and executing proficiently on his gameplan finished the job. Two weeks of hindsight and contemplation help that thought process, at the time I was just salty.

It’s one of those things I find frustrating about the game, the variance, particularly mana screw/flood.  You always get that person that says “oh you should play Warcraft then”.  Yeah no thanks.  The concept of no lands is great and all but without lands you wouldn’t have all the depth that I enjoy in Magic, a double edged sword.  This much I have realized about myself, my main tilt trigger isn’t necessarily loss, it’s losing when I can’t do a damn thing about it.  Poker and magic of course love doing this to you time to time, it is just part of the game(s).

At home, wrong think is my prevailing attitude.  I am blaming the loss on two weeks of running inconsistent B/R lists and ruing the variance of the game.  Of course looking at it I knew that the first week with the deck I just had the wrong build.  Week 2 was just cards not falling my way, it happens.  That all said though I decided I wasn’t going to run the deck again, HELL NO! I was annoyed with those decks and to try and mitigate my annoyance I decided to fall back on my G/W list which hasn’t seen play in over a month.

My G/W list has been my favorite since my Game Day win.  It’s hugely powerful and does a lot of the stuff that I like to do in magic, mainly smashing face and creating interesting combat situations through escalating power buildup.  I’ve been tweaking it here and there based on the local meta despite not actively campaigning it, so I figured it was good to go.  After every 3-2 finish my brain kept going “I should have run my G/W list!”.  This is wrong thinking as well.  Again no guarantee that it will just smash face like it did on Game Day and the week after.  Timing is everything in magic and if you look there just aren’t as many straight mid range G/W lists running around in the top 8 right now.

Matchups Matter

For the first FNM of the New Year I knew had it all figured out, G/W was the way and that was that!  The build I brought was basically just slightly adjusted from my Game Day winning list from this article here.  Basically all the same but with the removal of the Entreat the Angels and the phallically charged Armada Wurms.  With a hat tip to the higher number of Red and R/B lists at the store I put a couple Thragtusk in the main.  It’s good for the life-gain and with main deck Restoration Angels you of course enjoy the combo.  In addition it’s also solid against Supreme Verdict decks.  I made it by without Thragtusk in the past but felt it was needed now.

Round 1 I ran into Justin.  Back for more, Justin got me again with his Jund list.  Game 1 I once again had him down to 2 and unable to close.  In Game 2 my deck decided I needed to see what 11 lands looked like and Justin showed off why Olivia Voldaren is a top card in Standard.  That was my round 1. Basically a complete ranching by Justin, not a great start to the record or mindset for the night.

Round 2 was pretty uneventful, I kept a pretty speedy hand and my young opponent durdled out of the gate both games and I wrapped up both in a quick 9 mins.  This deck can get there when it wants to.

Round 3 I get paired up with Skyhaven regular Garrett.  Garrett was piloting his control list this week, one I had outrun last week.  This week however it was his turn to take me to school.  He expressed from the start how happy he was with his keep, my hand was pretty decent and I started out with the beats until he nailed me with a Supreme Verdict.  From there I never really recovered as he went Jace, Tamiyo and then Liliana.  I plodded along for a bit watching each Jace ‘fact or fiction’ activation delivering some type of removal.  Terminus, another verdict and finally a Detention Sphere and I just scooped it up.  Garret flashed the 4, yes 4, Sphinx’s Revelation he had in his hand.  When you’re running good, you’re running good…

For game 2 I go to the sideboard and came back with a grip of 7 cards to help handle Garret’s deck, including my favorite surprise card Rootborn Defense.  Game 2 I started out quickly, hitting Garrett pretty hard and feeling good about the game.  I got out a Rootborn Defence to counter his first Supreme Verdict to keep my Loxodon Smiter alive and hoped for a Silverblade Paladin to just finish in a hurry and force a game 3.  No support really came and he was able to keep my aggression in check with the bane of aggro decks,  Azorius Charm.  Garret stabilized with a Jace, Architect of Thought, once again each activation delivering gold.  My draws however provided a continual stream of land or the occasional mana dork.  Once he got the Jace/Tamiyo soft lock going I really didn’t have a chance in that game.  Unfortunately the 12 land I drew and his ongoing removal made sure it didn’t happen.

I scoop it up in a pretty piss miserable state.  The game ripped from my hands by flood of mana and possibly my worst matchup.  A good player running the best control deck.  The inconsistent nature of my deck tonight, and the previous weeks results compounding in some saucy tilt.

Garrett was all class though and thankfully didn’t “poke the bear”.  Despite my deck fumbling around like a drunk,  his deck delivered and he executed it perfectly.

At this point in the evening I’m in that post tilt zone or maybe even riding the tilt dragon still.  Round 4 was against Spencer.  He’s a new player at the store and he’s slowly developing his deck and learning the ropes.  This match went down pretty quick in my favour.  My deck arbitrarily deciding to work for a round just to keep me playing.  I think it’s these spurts in what is typically a very consistent build that I found most frustrating.

Round 5 I end up facing Steven G once again, both of us in the 2-2 bracket.  Both of us experiencing a pretty up and down evening.  His Omnidoor deck hiccuping a little and him professing to have been making bad plays costing him games all night.  Both of us traded games but I ended up taking the round with Steven scooping to me in Game 3.  I had a good board presence but two play mistakes and another miss-tapped mana and Steven was getting frustrated.  I think Steven very well may have gotten there anyways that game. Much like me though, tilt was taking him over and it was probably the right call just to stop at that point and call it a night.

Looking back on it, I think after round 3 I probably should have done the same but ended up sticking it out. From this I was “rewarded” with a headache and a 3-2 record.  In the end I got the FNM promo Searing Spear on the random draw so you know there’s that.

If anything the night was good for a bit of introspection on tilt management.  It’s been a while since I’ve gone through it and it’s always good to review and reset your expectations and try and remind yourself what to do to try and mitigate or control it when it comes.  I doubt I’ll ever get past it fully but I’ll certainly keep putting some work in on it.

For my next Standard event I’m not sure what I’ll play, hopefully the SCG event his weekend gives some inspiration.  It may well be B/R, having given it a week off.  G/W doesn’t seem like a 100% great selection at the store but I could be wrong.  Matchups mean a lot and given a completely different cycle of players I could have very well gone x-0 with the deck or heck even 0-2 drop.  Also lingering in the background is the very cool B/G Aggro list by Brian Kibler.  In my play-testing It looks like it can do some pretty fun stuff but I am concerned on it’s ability to close out. I just have to bring myself to commit to it on night, maybe just before Gatecrash.

Draft Aside

So just before New Years a message went out to the Facebook group from George B seeing if anyone was going to the regular Sunday draft.  I wasn’t interested in drafting RTR again but after the wife gave me the OK I messaged and zipped down to the store.  We managed to get a perfect 8 man pod and thankfully, like me, most others weren’t entirely down with a RTR draft.  We ended up drafting Innistrad – M13 – M13.  I will just say this, those two sets synergize pretty darn well.  As it is when we went through the Innistrad packs I was just reminded how great that set was, simply packed with quality limited cards.  M13 is much the same too, a format I need to draft a few more times I think.  I ended up going 2-0-1 taking down first and some packs with a Jund list running a total of zero rares.  I can’t wait for Gatecrash to see a new limited and standard environment but this slightly oddball draft was a really nice departure from the norm.

In my last article I had mentioned some recorded drafts.  As it turns out I really never had much opportunity over the holidays to do a Holiday Cube draft and now I have a pile of cube tickets languishing in my collection waiting for next season.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to record a MTGO draft of some type in the coming week.

Thanks for reading!

Twitt

Poutine, a French Canadian Delicacy

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In my ongoing quest to gather points and random swings at higher level play I recently attended a Pro Tour Qualifier in Burnaby, BC.  This PTQ hosted by Magic Stronghold was for Pro Tour Gatecrash held in February in snowy, lovely, poutine ridden Montreal.

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The larger reason, of course, was points and I have an interesting tidbit I realized.  I have been going about this the wrong way.  I certainly needed points for two of my goals; 400 Points by Dec. 16th for a 1 round bye in the upcoming Grand Prix season, and a top 50 finish in the standings for the last season in British Columbia.  The longer term one, 500 points for the World Magic Cup Qualifier invite was all wrong though.  I had the dates in my head that I needed 500 points between late August and early April.  As it turns out this is actually based on yearly points and runs from April 2, 2012 through March 17, 2013.  So rather than the points I earned, 373 before the PTQ, I was actually sitting on over 600 on the current year.  This means I’ve already reached the appropriate point total for the yearly season!

bush-mission

The other bonus is that a few other regulars from my local store Skyhaven Games have made it in, some of these fine players attended the PTQ with me, padding their points and not even knowing.  This is great as it could make for a larger contingent when these events come up in the late Spring.  We don’t know the locations for them yet but in a recent Twitter conversation with Helene Bergeot, the face of Organized Play at Wizards, I made my vote for Vancouver.  I also left her with a follow up “anywhere but Edmonton” vote.  Calgary isn’t too hard for me to manage as I have family and friends there and flights are generally not bad but Edmonton is a more awkward proposition.  Vancouver is of course more ideal as it’ll allow more Vancouver Island players to attend and that is always good.  It’s far easier for Albertans to get down to Vancouver than it is for people on the Island.  It often will mean an expensive flight or 11-14 hours in the car with the ferry ride, also not a cheap proposition.

So at this point you can assume because I didn’t jump up and down saying I’m going to the Pro Tour that I didn’t take down this PTQ.  It was in fact won by a local Victoria player out of Yellow Jacket Comics, Tyler Wooley.  Tyler is an active player in the area and a big hat tip to him and the two other Victoria players that took spots in the Top 8, nice job gents!

Slip into the Pool

Ok so here is the pool.  I’ll post some very quick round recaps as I don’t want to go too in-depth into each match like I normally do but I am interested in your opinions on how I built and what changes, if any, you would have made.

Full Pool

My Build

I can say that I am very sure I had a few options here, I tried to maximize my solid rares but I feel that I could have maybe gone with the Golgari splash instead to get more consistent power.

In addition to this I always found myself siding in an additional island for a forest which did help and the Archon came out every time.  I know it was probably not worth it at this point to run it, I think I kept it in the build due to the pretty serious drubbing it gave me in a draft a few weeks ago.  Sadly though our most phallic magic card, Armada Wurm, could not save me…

Round Notes

Round 1 Vs. : Brian

Notes:  Won Roll – Pack rat.  Enough said.

Lose – 1-2 / Now 0-1

Round 2 Vs. Alex

Notes: Lost Roll – Alex drops a Skymark Roc in Game 1, I have no answers and despite him not returning any of my arresters to my hand for some reason he simply gets there with 2 fliers and I do nothing.  Game 2 I mull down to 4 with each redraw worse than the last. I start off drawing a land, miss three straight land drops and die.  Such is magic…

Lose – 0-2 / Now 0-2

Round 3 Vs. Ryan

Notes: Lost Roll – Game 1 is a pretty solid back and forth despite my mulligan to 6 and stall on 3 mana for several turns.  I eventually grind him out.  Game 2 he smashes me completely.  Game 3 I have handled pretty well with him stumbling to play anything that matters.  I don’t recall his deck but I am pretty sure it was a durdly golgari thing.

Win – 2-1 / Now 1-2

Round 4 Vs. Chris

Notes: Lost Roll – This was probably the best match of the day for me as far as play goes.  It basically was the mirror match with my pool being slightly better.  We exchanged Game 1 and 2 with me winning the opener pretty decisively and the same for him Game 2.  Game 3 went so long I had 13 of my 17 mana out and despite this lofty land total and small library size I just wasn’t getting any gas to finish him off.  I eventually lost the ground war, barely, on Turn 3 of turns.  It was a tough loss as it really put me out of contention for just about anything prize wise but I really felt I had played this match well.

Lost – 1-2 / Now 1-3

Round 5 Vs. Avery

Notes: Won Roll – Yep that’s not a typo,actually won a roll.  Still a bit twisted after that last in turns loss I was out for blood.  Thankfully I was able to exact it on Avery in two tight games, coming down to my slightly better air corp grinding him out.  Game 1 I got there despite a mull to 5, at this level we’re starting to see who miss built their pool or just had a bad day.  I am hoping it’s still the latter for me. ;-)

Win – 2-0 / Now 2-3

Round 6 Vs. Mitchell

Notes: Lost Roll – This round was annoying more than anything.  I lost in two very quick games to a Rakdos deck that had no business being in the 2-3 pool.  This thing was solid side to side and end to end.  I can only imagine he piloted it poorly or just had the worst streak of luck to get here.  His solid deck was only aided by my durdly opening 7 in game 1.  We were trading blows and keeping parity until an overwhelming attack left me unable to keep anyone in play.

In Game 2 I mull to 5, play 2 lands and then miss any land drops and only draw my top end cards while he beats my face in.  Afterwards as I’m packing up and shaking my head at my continually wackado draws Mitchell feels the need to express his displeasure at flooding out in game 2.  This is the same guy that curved out perfectly and when I finally scooped it up he had 5 creatures on the field. Not only that he took not one lick of damage.  I really hope Mitchell can overcome the mental heartbreak that this mana flooding put on him.  Forced to win uncontested but with creatures and adequate mana must really be hard. Only time will tell if he gets the support he needs.

Lost – 0-2 / Now 2-4

At this point I just feel like a magic punching bag. Only reason I haven’t dropped is that I’m a sucker for punishment to try and maybe get a few more points to pad my totals.  In addition it’s far too late to side draft but still too early to head to the ferry.  As it turns out thanks to attrition there’s a chance some of us might sneak into the top 64 and get some pack prizes. Everyone knows packs are packs, even those of the pity variety!

Round 7 Vs. Zaryn

Notes: Won Roll – I had seen a bit of Zaryn’s deck earlier when Geordie was trying to fix his deck build.  Zaryn is a solid local Victoria player and is often found at the larger area events.  From what I know of Zaryn from our interactions over the past year his deck is very likely something off the wall as he certainly a brewer at heart.

Not surprisingly it ends up being a 5 colour “mess” that basically is trying to win through a semi-control method grinding you out until Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius gets online or through doorkeeper milling you with his multiple defender buddies.  In this case my deck decides to shut off again and despite some OK starts it just sticks me on 4 and then 5 mana and I lose games I probably shouldn’t have lost with my best cards stranded in my hand.  Shouldn’t be this hard to get 5 and 6 mana creatures out with 17 lands.  At this point I’m thinking I should have put the Gatecreeper Vine or an 18th land in.  Too late for that though.

Lose: 0-2 / Now 2-5

Round 8 Vs. George

Notes: Won Roll – OK so last round, we have to play fast as really if we don’t leave exactly as this round ends we might miss the last ferry home and we don’t want that.  The three of us, Geordie, Trevor and myself are all in the bottom 6 tables which incidentally are also right in the mix of tables that may not have enough points for top 64 and a few packs.  Out for revenge and to prove my deck doesn’t suck, I shuffle it up and get ready for the last round.

My opponent George is a younger guy but seemed still pretty happy to just be playing in a larger event.  Poor George though as my deck lit up and ran exactly like I thought it could.  I dispatched George in two pretty well orchestrated games.  I know the magic gods were doing this just to punish me, showing me how the deck could have run if I hadn’t pissed them off somewhere along the way…  In happy news the three of us all won and all squeaked into prizes, ferry draft here we come!  We grabbed the two others, Zaryn and Sean, a GP Vancouver Top 8 Finisher, and run for the ferry.  Burgers, fries and drafting were had.  I didn’t get the ferry poutine though, poutine is for closers! Ferry drafting is for everyone though.

Final tally 3-5, 6-11 in games.

It’s About the People

One of the great things about PTQ’s is how they bring players of all ilk from the surrounding area.  One such gentleman I ran into at this PTQ was none other than Marshall Sutcliffe of Limited Resources fame.  Marshall has been a large influence on me in limited magic.  Despite recent evidence of my RTR drafting streak, his and his partner John Loucks’ advice and guidance on their podcast have been a huge boost.  Their knowledge has helped escalate me into the format much quicker than I would have been able to accommodate otherwise.

I have briefly chatted with Marshall at different Grand Prix’s we’ve been at, this time I had a chance to chat with him and even watch one of his matches.  After watching that one game I realize I still have a ways to go in how I assess limited combat situations.  He took a line I wouldn’t have and took back a game I would have certainly lost.  Showing what kind of class act he is, in between games Marshall spent time reviewing Geordie’s pool and showed how he would have built it differently.  It was an awkward pool to work with and it was great to see how someone as experienced as Marshall is would build it. Just the fact that he bothered to take the time from his break between rounds to help a fan and fellow player shows his calibre.

All that aside I was able to talk with and congratulate Marshall on his new venture writing the Limited Information column for DailyMTG.com, otherwise known as “The Mothership”.  Marshall is a great pick for this column.  Anyone who doesn’t already would do well to check out that column in the New Year. In addition check out the Limited Resources podcast on MTGCast.com.  That is of course if you don’t already.

Points, Points Points

OK so did we get there?  We already know from earlier that I am now well within the points range for the WMCQ invite.  The points earned at the PTQ, as expected, solidified me for my other goals.  I finished 2012 Season 3 with 443 points, good for the 1 Round bye as well as a very solid 25th overall finish in British Columbia.  Quite happy with the results considering how slow of a start I got back in the Summer.  My results have been good and despite my struggles with Return to Ravnica as a limited format I have made up for it in constructed play and perseverance.  I am definitely looking forward to the upcoming Gatecrash limited format for a change up and the dramatic changes to constructed I am sure it will bring.

Thanks for reading, next post will maybe be a FNM recap or maybe a MTGO draft if I can get my cam software working in Windows 8.  I may even record a draft of the Magic Online holiday cube.  I am flat out terrible at these but I always try a couple.  They can be fun and it does provide this fairly new player exposure to a lot of cards and general builds that help me in other formats.  In addition it is great for deck construction and card evaluation skill building, something everyone can likely benefit from.

Have a great holidays!

Shawn

@islandlooter on Twitter

Twitt

On the Grind

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If you’ve been following along you know that I recently, as of this writing a month ago, attended Grand Prix Chicago.  Mainly because grand prix events are awesome but also in order to put myself in the hunt for points towards my lofty goals.  To re-iterate my current goals are…

- 400 Points by December 16th = 1 Bye at Grand Prix’s Held in 2013 Season #1 & #2 (Dec. 17, 2012 to August 17, 2013)

- 500 Points by March 17, 2013 =  Invite to World Magic Cup Qualifier event

- Side Goal of top 50 in British Columbia for this Competitive Quarter (Up to December 16th, 2012) = Nothing but a warm feeling

So where am I with those goals?  I’d say doing pretty good.  In all reality I haven’t played a lot since GP Chicago, probably at my regular pace of one, maybe two times a week.  Thankfully the GP gave me a big enough boost that I didn’t have to try and cram in 3 or 4 things a week to keep the points trickling in.  Firstly with my work travel that’s damn near impossible.  Secondly, and most importantly, my wife would put a halt to that right away.

Anyways, back to the point’s thing.  As mentioned GP Chicago set me up pretty well, as anticipated, my points total after GP Chicago = 332.  I had just over a month to hit 400 for that first goal, 1 bye.  I needed the points by December 16th.  With my exotic destination travel over with for the time being I had to earn points the normal way, FNM and Draft.  Here are a few events I did after returning from GP Chicago.

Avatar_Azorius_01

November 15th, 2012 @ Craving For a Game in Surrey

Format: Draft

Results: 1-2

Points: 5 (2 for participation, 3 for match points)


Notes: I played against SCG Open Winner and all around good player Brandon Chreptyk even though I didn’t know it at the time.  I got a bye the second round and then for fun got paired up with Brandon’s buddy and grinder friend Alan Delikatny.  Brandon didn’t mention who he was, I didn’t realize until after the event when I looked at the results online.  I could tell while playing they knew their stuff, I’m sure you’ll see more of these guys over the coming years.

New Total: 337

Avatar_Rakdos_02

November 22nd, 2012 @ Skyhaven in Victoria

Format: Draft

Results: 1-2

Points: 5 (2 for participation, 3 for match points)

 


Notes: I recall this draft being an odd one.  My draft picks were all over the place until a very punishing Rakdos deck started to form.  At the same time this draft was full of non regulars to the store and the decks I was facing were completely off the wall.  This normally would bode well for a well crafted draft deck but it hasn’t seemed to be the case in RTR draft for me.  From my perspective, and this is just my observation, it seems the more unusual your deck is the more likely you steal wins.  Either way another poor result with a decent deck.

New Total: 342

November 23rd, 2012 @ Skyhaven in Victoria

Format: Standard (FNM)

Results: 4-1

Points: 14 (2 for participation, 12 for match points)

Notes: I took my G/W Midrange deck, slightly modified into battle once more.  It had been since my game day win when I ran this deck, or played any meaningful standard matches.  Turns out my early meta call still stood up quite well here.  My only loss was in round 4 against the mirror match.  Sadly I can say it was because of a completely bonehead, tunnel vision, playing to fast type mistake on my part.

We’re in game 3 and he’s opened pretty fast slapping a couple Rancor on whatever he could strap them to in order to get in damage.  I have two Selesnya Charms to remove what he can attach them to and he gets greedy twice and I make him pay.  I start to get my board presence and after a few back and forth turns the dust settles and he is left with a beast from a Thragtusk and I have a Sigarda, Host of Herons.  He’s at 10 life, I’m at 11 or 12.  I know he has those 2 Rancor in hand and the beast in play.  I swing in and put him to 5 and promptly play my last card in hand…..  Sigarda, Host of Herons….  He’s like ok they die.  I pause briefly as I look at the board and think, why the hell did I just legend rule myself?

picard-facepalm

Only thing at this point is I had the other angels in my deck in mind like Sublime Archangel.  The balance of these aren’t legendary.  In addition I was simply playing too fast sensing the win.  I know at the time I was thinking I wanted an untapped blocker in case he found a Silverblade Paladin or some other creature to exacties me as it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for decks like ours.  He proceeds to untap, hit me hard, plays an Avacyn’s Pilgrim or Arbor Elf and I draw a blocker who promptly dies on his next attack. Another turn he finds another creature and I scoop it up drawing a land on my last draw. So tip for all of you at home, slow down!

slow-down1

An embarrassing loss, he goes on to split in the final round for 1st place and I get the incredulous, “You made what mistake?” over and over again for the rest of the night.  Later in the week I watch Conley Woods, a favorite player of mine make a mistake by accidentally playing a land tapped when it would have potentially saved the game for him in the top 8 of a Grand Prix, so I don’t feel as bad about my bungle.

“Funny” note from this match.  My opponent says to me at the end, after we’re gathering up our cards, “Guess that wasn’t your desired outcome”. Uhhh…  “No, I wanted to make a huge play mistake and legend rule myself costing me the game I had in hand”.  THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.  I don’t know if he was a purposefully ribbing me or not here. Not knowing this player at all I can’t say, I’d like to believe that his comment didn’t come out the way he wanted but either way, what a thing to say.  I go on to crush the final round and close out in 3rd, but lesson mostly learned.

New Total: 356

At this point level I’m closing in very nicely on my goal, but wait there’s more!

Avatar_Selesnya_02November 29th, 2012 @ Skyhaven in Victoria

Format: Draft

Results: 2-2

Points: 8 (2 for participation, 6 for match points)

 

 

Notes: This draft I kept my options open through pack one after listening to the sage advice on the Limited Resources podcast.  Turns out this pays off as deep in pack one I listen to the cards and move in on Selesnya.  Pack 2, Pick 1 I get a Temple Garden with no other really good card in the pack.  Cool value and fixing! Pack 2 is a little lighter on my colours but my deck keeps getting better and better.  By the end of Pack 3 I have a solid representation of a Selesnya deck.  It’s missing one bomby card to put it over the top but it’s got good removal, a few nice tricks and all kinds of mid range power finishing with double Coursers’ Accord.

The first two round I run over my opponents in pretty brutal fashion, the deck is a titch slow but once it hits 4 mana it starts to churn pretty quick tying down the board and eventually taking over.  Anyone watching is pretty fearful of the deck.  My round 3 opponent Cameron C. watched a good chunk of my last match and has pretty much assumed his Izzet deck won’t be a match.  Turns out it is better than he suspects and after a bit of a misplay on my part, he manages to take game 2 and my deck stumbles for the first time game 3, right when you want it to.  Cameron played it well but it was my match to win if I let it happen.

Round 4 Aside

One of my biggest peeves is oddly side pools, in particular the ones that are too big.  Drafting is designed and sets are developed to be done with 8 people.  Obviously this isn’t always possible in smaller shops and scenes and that’s fine.  What gets my goat though is these 4 round events where it’s one large event or even a large group of players in two over 8 person pods.  It ends up mucking with the card distribution, tie breakers, pairings the whole thing.  Thankfully Skyhaven is going to try whenever possible to avoid this.  As it annoys me enough I will likely drop from most events that will end up like this, the aggravation just isn’t worth it, I can draft at home if I have to.  It’s not the same as I don’t get to see some of the regulars but some of those drafts have ended quite late and mid week it just doesn’t work, all other issues aside.

Back to the action, we’re on to round 4 and I’m up against the always solid Kris L.  Kris has also watched my deck in action and figures it’ll be lights out for him.  This match goes pretty much the same as the last one against Cameron except Kris gets a perfect curve out and Supreme Verdict, on time, each game.  I get stalled and flooded in the two games I lose.  Thankfully no play mistakes on my part, but an incredibly frustrating finish to what was promising to be a solid draft.  I finish 5th on tie breakers, to the guy that got a 3rd round bye to go 2-2 and I miss out on any packs.  Of note the guy that beat me on tie breakers and had the bye was also in last place in our pod and in round 4 had to play the first place Cameron who was the only 3-0 player at that point.  Just another spot where 9+ player drafts are screwed up.

Art_Azorius_05_ScottMFischer

The frustrations mount on RTR drafting.  I have been studying what I can on it, watching, listening and it just doesn’t seem to help much.  I really love drafting but the frustration with the format is very near what it was with Avacyn Restored.  AVR was incredibly swingy and annoying if you didn’t open well.  In RTR it’s slightly different in that you can lose games out of nowhere but there are better removal for the bombs and you can build a solid deck without any in it.  In AVR it was quite possible to simply not get any good rares or uncommons at all where in RTR someone usually has at least one, sometimes up to four.

At this point I have decided to take a break on drafting until later in December just because I wasn’t enjoying the results.  I am not expecting to be 3-0ing all the time, that’s just unrealistic.  However some of these decks have been very good, my play has been mostly solid and I’m losing to weird decks and what I would call pretty marginal play in a lot of cases.  I’ll still draft leading up to Gatecrash but a couple to three week break is probably worthwhile at this point.

New Total: 364

December 7th, 2012 @ Skyhaven in Victoria

Format: Standard (FNM)

Results: 2-2

Points: 8 (2 for participation, 6 for match points)

Notes: I decided after watching the ongoing tournament development of standard and my own deep rooted desire to cast Bonfire of the Damned to adjust my GW deck to a Naya build.  I have to say as I was ripping apart exactly 50% of the deck to accommodate the red cards I just kept looking at the power and consistency of my GW build and hesitating.  The deck looked pretty similar to the one that won a SCG event a couple weeks ago.  If I recall it was built like this.

Naya

I loved the ability to cast Thundermaw Hellkite, who wouldn’t? But it seemed that bomb wasn’t trading off well enough with the explosiveness of my GW deck and it was still vulnerable to the still popular in our area, Bant Control.

This kind of speaks to the problem with utilizing deck selection info from around the world.  Each area has its own meta game and many more casually focused stores like Skyhaven don’t necessarily follow the global trends.  There are always the handful of the players with good enough collections and knowledge that those decks will show up with the better decks that you need to be prepared for.  When you look at a deck that’s specifically built to combat a known enemy like say BW Zombies and then run it at an event where maybe 2 people out of 20 or 30 are running it, the results can be less than desirable. Given the original design and tuning was to beat a 300, 500, 1000 person tournament and the public enemy deck will represent 30-40% of that field.  Sometimes decks are just overtly powerful in the “random” meta games and when you find one of those decks it’s hard to switch off of it.

thunder

So that being said, as the results show, the Naya experiment was a bit of a bust.  I figured this was probably a good week to try out a different deck but all I can say is that within an hour of being home the Naya build was apart and my GW deck was back together, for now at least.  I may get back to Naya come Gatecrash but at this point I just didn’t like it.  The consistency felt off most of the night and the games I did win were largely hitting with an unanswered Thundermaw.  If that’s all I wanted to do there are far better ways to accomplish that.  I will say the one game I cast Thundermaw on turn three was pretty darn fun though, mainly for the expression on my opponents face.

New Total: 372

You may note when this gets posted that we are but 3 days from the end of the season and my 400 point goal for the 1 round bye.  What’s the plan? I’m heading over for the juicy 5x multiplier at a Pro Tour Qualifier at Magic Stronghold in Burnaby, BC on December 15th.  This will only be my second ever PTQ, after the sealed Innistrad one just over a year ago.  There just aren’t many around this area and getting to Vancouver or Seattle, while not hard, isn’t overly convenient all the time with the family life.  I missed our inaugural one in Victoria for GP Chicago but this one falls on a weekend that I can actually work it in.  Best of all it fits nicely in with my deadline of the season ending Dec. 16th.

The 5x multiplier for PTQ events means that just showing up to the event, with the likelihood of well over 130 people, will put me just shy of 400 points in and of itself.  All I’ll need to do at that point is manage a single round draw to put me over the edge for my goal.  If that somehow goes sideways I should be able to just register for a side draft or two to make up those last couple points.

Next week we’ll hopefully see if I reached two of the three goals I set and ideally a nice run in the PTQ.  Always a tough, accomplished field in the Vancouver area, I’m sure it’ll be a good event either way.  Until then, thanks again for reading!

Twitt

Modern Unmaster

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So took a little bit to get this Grand Prix Chicago report up but such is the life of a travelling player.  Let’s face it I like writing this blog but I like playing Magic more and that has thankfully been an option the past couple weeks, so yay for me!  Anyways let’s dive into my Chicago sojourn and how the points chase is shaping up.

Early morning at Navy Pier, optimism abound!

When we last left our hero, me, I had just spent a week down in Louisville Kentucky.  Bored aside from a fun draft at a local game store and looking to take a rare opportunity at a US Grand Prix.  As a very new player I am not really overly up on the Modern format.  That’s not to say I haven’t followed it a bit or played a bit, however given the very fledgling state of the format here in Victoria my time spent actually playing and tuning my weapon of choice has been incredibly small.  So why go and subject yourself to a Modern Grand Prix you ask?  Well it’s a Grand Prix!  These things are great.

Over 1100 showed up to play Modern, seems legit!

Anyone can enter, you get to meet pros and artists, if you bomb out there are tons of side events of any ilk, generally a great time.  Events like this are even better if you’re doing it with friends as the support makes all the difference.  I have to say from the snap that doing these solo is a bit sucky but I met a number of genuinely nice players in Chicago that made my time spent in the event site a bunch of fun.  Grand Prix Chicago was held at the very cool Navy Pier event site.  If you haven’t ever been here and are heading to Chicago, gotta check this place out, it’s really hard to describe but it’s basically a big mall, promenade, fair, conference center, museum thing set at the foot of downtown Chicago on Lake Michigan.

Ominous clouds aside, this place is pretty amazing.

So what did I bring to battle?  The only deck I have and the only one I knew how to pilot, Affinity.  Of course like most Affinity decks these days there are no cards with Affinity so I simply wrote on the deck list submission ‘No Affinity’ as the deck name.  The build I utilized was a slightly modified version by Ari Lax, writer for Star City Games, a red burn based smash your face quick aggro deck.  These kinds of decks are perfectly suited for my play style and great for those with very little experience with these things.  To say that I was inexperienced with the deck would be close.  I have played it in less than a handful of small 6-8 man modern events at Skyhaven.  This build in particular I had done nothing but gold fish the deck about 100 times.  I hadn’t even played with the Arcbound Ravagers before!  Anyways here’s the decklist.

No Affinity by Ari Lax

Going into the event I thought I had a single round bye, earned from last Winter and my 400+ point season.  Turns out…. Nope.  That expired back in August, kind of awkward when round 1 pops up and instead of BYE next to my name I have a matchup.  This put me off a bit as I went and inquired and sure enough my name was no longer on the list of players with any byes.  I had checked the list prior to making my travel plans and I was on it still, must have been an old list.  Not that this would have deterred me but a win is a win and it always changes your odds and how far you will go.  When I had 3 byes for Grand Prix Seattle, won at a GPT at Skyhaven, the 3 wins put me in the thick of the pros and grinders and gave me a real shot of making day 2.

Feature match battle, pros, grinders and durdles (me) look on.

My win and in match at GP Seattle I ended up losing to a poker pro and long time magic player in a tough 3 game match.  This is the double edged sword of 2 and 3 byes.  You get a much better shot at Day 2 by taking a full 3rd of your matches out of your hands but if you keep up your winning ways you are typically playing really good players.  It becomes a lot harder to skim under the line.  It’s really neat to get to play pros, I’ve now faced a few great players. I’ve beat some, lost to some, and always had a good time and came away learning something.  Most pros are really good to play against and understand what it’s like to be a new player sitting across from someone with multiple pro tour top 8’s.

So no bye for me, how did the matches go?  Let’s get into it!

Round 1

Vs. Alex with Gifts Ungiven

This is where my inexperience rears its head.  I have heard of the card, seen it I think in cube but I have never played against this deck and it showed.  Thankfully Affinity just allows you to smash and dash but that only works until Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite shows up….

Game 1 – I start kind of slow, in fact I’m just plodding along swinging away with one or two guys, not really running a great draw.  I get him down to 9 on a pretty open board, he pulls the old Gifts Ungiven fail to find two cards play.  JUDGE!.  I have to gain clarity on this as I suspect it won’t be the last time this happens.  Gifts Ungiven says go find 4 cards with different names, you can apparently just fail to find two of them and pitch them into the yard.  Uhh, well that’s something.  OK.  Unburial Rites, Elesh Norn?  OK I’ll just go ahead and bin my board.  I hadn’t taken damage so I let him hit me while I drew hoping to find a couple burn spells.  No dice and we’re on to game 2.

Game 2 – I manage to jump up a lot faster and even land a sided in Rest In Peace.  Turns out it doesn’t matter he just puts up Lingering Souls tokens and oddly enough, pretty good against my deck.  Hmm forgot that was a card and no Whipflare sided in.  What’s that?  Hard cast Norn, great.  What are you at?  3 life?  Blerg.  Norn’s spirit friends hit me, I have one draw to find a burn spell, nope.  Guess they’re at the bottom of the lake.  :-\  Lose – 0-2 / Now 0-1

OK so that didn’t go well but maybe it’ll be an outsider deck….

Round 2

Vs. Christian with Jund

So apparently Affinity has a good matchup here.  In a previous build of my Affinity deck I have played Kentaro and his Jund deck at Skyhaven and it didn’t go well.  My build had changed a lot so we’ll see where this goes.

Game 1 – I start off pretty quick dropping Signal Pest onto the board with a bunch of 0 drops.  By turn 3 I’ve hit him for 10 which isn’t even that bad.  He finds some burn and I have to rebuild.  A handy Steelshaper’s Gift into Cranial Plating and a swing for 7 forces the scoop and we’re on to game 2 with Christian not really playing much of anything.

Game 2 – This game I basically just hit hit for 3 while he stalled on lands.  It happens to everyone.  I had set up a double Arcbound Ravager and Vault Skirge on the field.  He goes and casts Pyroclasm and I find the power of the Arcbound Ravager when I quickly remember to sack both in response and put the +1 triggers on the Vault Skirge.  The skirge rides out the storm and I literally do nothing else but hit him with that Skirge and he bricks out.  Win – 2-0 / Now 1-1.

Round 3

Vs. David with Jund – Won Roll

I knew Jund would be a popular deck but wasn’t looking forward to another back to back.  David, you could tell, knew what he was doing with this deck and it showed in our match.

Game 1 – This was a crazy game, the note I wrote for myself was “Stalled on 1 mana, he draws 4-5 removal spells”.  One mana keeps aren’t all that odd with Affinity, at least not for me.  I’m no expert but with the other mana acceleration it is rarely an issue.  Despite this 1 land keep I still hit him pretty hard while restocking the board, getting him down to 8 before he got Modern’s new darling Deathrite Shaman online.  I managed to keep his Tarmogoyf at bay but finally he just overwhelmed me and I scooped it up.

Game 2 – Simple note in my damage column. ‘Smash Turn 5’.  My deck went off this round, just like his did with drawing most of his removal in Game 1.  I hit him for 5 turn 2, turn 3 and then after getting rid of my Signal Pest only for 1.  A Cranial Plating equipped Blinkmoth Nexus hits him for 6 and he scoops it up at 3 when I flash the Galvanic Blast.  Easy game!

Game 3 – Did I say easy game?  That Jund deck is very strong and David showed off his play skill and luck.  I mulligan to 6 and keep the nut smash your face in hand and spew 5 of 6 cards onto the battlefield.  He is bug eyed at the power I dropped onto the field.  He draws for his turn and slams down a Pyroclasm.  Oops forgot about that card again.  He later claimed it was in his opening hand but the way he drew, then played a card it and his reaction to my opening play I am 95% sure he top decked it.  My over extension cost me that game (could have also won it though) and I fall to a Goyf and Kitchen Finks over 8 or 9 turns. Lose – 1-2 / Now 1-2

This was a tough loss just for the fact that my deck can beat it, I know it can now.  I’ll never know for sure if I did just play right into that ‘clasm but either way I was probably too overeager to spew and smash that game with the removal he was packing.

Round 4

Vs. Matt with Gifts Ungiven – Won Roll

Another Gifts deck though this time I understand the match-up a little better. I’m hoping these don’t get to frequent though I always feel less in control of these matches than I do versus Jund or other decks.

Game 1 – Darn those Lingering Souls tokens.  I came out pretty quick and start hitting with a guy I had barely seen all day so far Etched Champion, this would be a trend that would bear out all day unfortunately.  Game 1 was a bit protracted but Matt managed to limit my damage and I drop to 4 spirits after a pretty pitched battle.

Game 2 – I get a Vault Skirge online followed by a Blood Moon. After four or five swings I am up to 26.  He managed to get a few guys out and we end up in a stalemate until I finally find one of my four Etched Champions.  I’m now able to get through for 2 at a time but it turns out to be enough to get him down to 4.  A Shrapnel Blast for 5 closes out the game just before he was going to be able to untap and obliterate my board with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

Game 3 – I’m feeling better about this match-up despite it being very tough.  All I need to do is rest in peace and blood moon him and everything is good right?  Well a very sad mulligan down to 4, my first ever in competition magic makes this a pretty tough game.  I kept a hand with a land, creature, blood moon and a Springleaf Drum.  I actually land the Blood Moon and start hitting him a little but it’s just dribs and drabs.  He isn’t under any pressure and it took just long enough to get the Blood Moon out that his mana dorks have enough time to assemble the Gifts Ungiven combo and Elesh Norn and friends smash me for 13 and I scoop.  Lose – 1-2 / Now 1-3

A bit crestfallen at my mull to 4 but those are the breaks.  I am now completely out of contention for day 2, not that I had any allusions to making it but this is where a lot of people would just drop.

Points Aside

So why not drop if I’m out of contention?  I had decided at this point to make a run at getting an invite to the World Magic Cup Qualifier, as discussed in my last article.  Part of taking in this Grand Prix was the max opportunity at points.  In addition to this Grand Prix events are just great! At this point regardless if I miss day 2 there were still a max of 5 more rounds.  Let’s face it, the players now in the X-3 or X-4 bracket that stuck around were likely not cream of the crop and there was a good chance at more points.  I had 64 Points just for showing up and my single match win was worth 24 points.  I was already up 92 points, more than half of the points I had accumulated grinding FNM and drafts so far that quarter.  I had to keep going.

Round 5

Vs. Matt with Splinter Twin – Lost Roll

This was a pretty funny match.  It wasn’t actually until Game 2 that I knew what he had.  Matt was not overly experienced but he knew the deck, he just couldn’t find anything he wanted.  He was good through the whole thing and we had a good chuckle through the match and chatted a bit afterwards, a nice guy that likely just got a bit unlucky.

Game 1 – Matt does nothing but dig.  I don’t even see any parts of the Splinter Twin combo, about one of the few decks I actually have any familiarity with.  I at one point thought it might be the weird Izzet NivMagus Elemental deck piloted by Gerry Thompson.  Not the case though.  I beat Matt down without taking a hit and I have no idea what to sideboard in aside from Rest in Peace as he had some little bit of flashback in his deck.

Game 2 – More of the same, at this point I genuinely feel quite bad for him.  He gets out a few blockers but Galvanic Blast clears the way.  He is starting to find some removal and I have to work a bit harder to keep guys on the field but a Cranial Plating around Turn 6 and the writing is on the wall.  One swing with that, he goes to his draw step lamenting his inability to deal with the artifact and scoops it up.  Win – 2-0 / Now 2-3

Round 6

Vs. Will with B/W/G Tokens – Lost Roll

Will seemed pretty assured of himself going into this match; guess it hasn’t been that hard for him.  I have played a similar deck with Josh R. at Skyhaven so I knew a little of what to expect.  The darn Lingering Souls tokens would be a pain either way.

Game 1 – Smashy Smashy?  We both get stuck on mana but my deck can get through that.  I finally drew Cranial Plating and hit for 5 and then 7.  Will isn’t so lucky and we move on to Game 2.

Game 2 – Will showed me how his deck worked and I realized my hand was way too slow.  I was on the fence for the keep and it turns out I should have just mulliganed.  The deck mulligans pretty well with its low land count but I was just being cocky after my first game win.  This one is pretty protracted though as we both basically just poked away at each other for dribs and drabs.  He finally stabilizes at 10 and I can’t keep enough blockers in play.

Game 3 – I snap keep and go with a Turn 2 Etched Champion, pretty much impossible to beat without a lot of cards or a sweeper.  He starts to build out his board though and I can sense I’m really just a turn or so away from losing this game. I land a second Etched Champion with him at 8, swing the next turn and flash the Galvanic Blast for the win.  Win – 2-1 / Now 3-3

Round 7

Vs. Taylor with Affinity (Blue) – Lost Roll

As it turns out Taylor was a recent member of the X-3 club and didn’t seem too pleased, who would be? Sucks to get that far and just miss a few rounds short.

Game 1 – I was on the other end of an Affinity ROFL stomp.  He kept a nut hand and just spewed.  As it sometimes happens I keep a loose hand game 1 as I don’t want to give up cards against an unknown deck.  Something I’ll have to work on with this deck.  Not much to say here I really was flat footed and he killed in on turn 4.

Game 2 – This was a protracted match with both of us keeping pretty decent hands and building up some arms.  The key cards for both decks, Galvanic Blast for me and Thoughtcast for him really pulled their weight.  In this case because the match went so long Thoughcast really pulled through with the extra cards.  I could have pulled off the win though if I ever had drawn more than 2 lands.  As we had a ground stall the only path to victory was in the air.  I managed a single swing hit for 8 poison off of an Inkmoth Nexus equipped with Cranial Plating, a move that surprised him.  Despite me blasting his sole blocker, his own Inkmoth when he blocked my follow up attack, he drew well though and went Blinkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth Nexus to stifle that plan. I also screwed up here and didn’t respond to the activation and missed the spot to burn out the moth, letting him block with it for whatever reason.  One more land would have allowed me to dual activate Inkmoths and then snap attach the cranial Plating to whichever one he couldn’t block.  Sadly I was only able to get one more poison through and he had lethal on board next turn.  Lose – 0-2 / Now 3-4

I had gotten a taste of the sweet, sweet 0.500 club and I wanted more.  So in spite of my old ass getting really damn tired and my plethora of snacks and water running out, I decided to stay and try and win one more.

Round 8

Vs. Logan with Emrakul Ramp – Lost Roll

You might notice a trend here; I lost 5 of 8 dice rolls.  I don’t tend to fare well with die rolls in general it seems but here my deck definitely cares whether I win the roll or not.  It can make a huge tempo difference, especially with decks that have enough removal.

Logan was in the same club as I, trying to get to 4-4 and leave even on the day.  He wished me good luck but said he wanted to be 4-4 so he wasn’t being overly truthful about the luck part.  I said the same went for me and we laughed and shuffled it up.  Logan was another that was above the rim when it came to having a good time.  I’m not sure if he was just punch drunk like I was at the time or he’s like this all the time, all the same it was a pretty fun match.

Game 1 – Logan durdled around and dug like you would not believe.  I kept a reasonable if not slow hand (again!) but it had a lot of power so it paid off.  A Cranial Plating and swing for 7 on turn 3 had Logan shaking his head and digging some more.  Turn 4 I swung for 10 and after his draw step Logan scooped it up and we went to game 2.

Game 2 – This time it was my turn to watch Logan do something powerful, I started off reasonably well but he found all his Urza lands and cast a turn 5 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn while he was sitting at 7 life and about to die on the next swing.  Logan took his extra turn and I weathered one swing from the big Eldrazi and I held on at 5.  I waited for my draw step as another Galvanic Blast would let me win the game with my remaining mana.  No such luck and I scooped.

Game 3 – No messing around this time I kept a lighting fast hand with my best buddy Signal Pest.  His deck really relies on surviving and then turning the game around.  I swung for 5 on Turn 2, 6 on Turn 3 and then after removing my Pest I was only able to get in for 2 and then 1 damage.  I held onto my burn though and a Shrapnel Blast with him on 6 and no way to block my remaining 1/1s forced Logan to scoop and I managed to draw even on the day again!  Won 2-1 / Now 4-4.

So that wraps up the action side of things for Modern.  In other wanderings that day at the Grand Prix I managed mid day to get LSV to sign my Sun Titan playmat. The same mat I had him sign in Seattle after we played Round 6.  LSV is always a class act and doesn’t mind taking a moment to sign or chat, great guy and one of my favorite players by far.  I also picked up a few John Avon Unhinged lands, pimping my modern deck out a little and finishing my set of 1 each.  Minor pimping but still amazing art none the less.

Each John Avon Unhinged land these days costs 3-5$ each (non foil). For just $18 you can have an A4 sized lithograph of each land. I have a signed Forest and it’s great!

Tired and in need of food I started the long couple mile walk back to my rental car and the 30 minute drive out to the airport where I was staying for the night.

After a quick meal at Chipotle (yum!) I got back to the hotel and checked out the event list for the following day.  I didn’t have a lot of time before I had to drive back out but I wanted to get in something on day 2.  I decided that rather than play my solid G/W deck that won game day in the TCGPlayer Standard event I would just play in the TCGPlayer Sealed event.  Some pros would be in it and for my entry fee I would at minimum get a few rounds of play and some cards out of the deal.  Standard would just be a chance to win points.  Not that it wasn’t what I was going for but I felt pretty good about what I earned the day before.

Sunday started off well, I got to the site and registered for Sealed nice and quick.  I noted that Steve Argyle wasn’t in.  Steve’s one of the more popular artists in Magic these days, check out his contributions here.

As luck would have it as I was walking away from his booth he was just walking up.  I ended up chatting with him for a few minutes, genuinely a great guy.  As a side benefit I also was first in line thanks to my lurking so the new 20 deep line was not even a concern.  I got a Deathrite Shaman signed and a signed print for my wife and headed over for the soon to be firing TCGPlayer Sealed event.

Sealed was a non-event though.  It was oddly slow to start compared to a lot of these I’ve been to and we lost at least a solid half hour or more to the organizers and judges screwing around.  To make a long story a little shorter I opened a weird pool that wanted to be three completely different decks.  My bombs were either Corpsejack Menace & Lotleth Troll or ‘Niv Mizzet, Dracosmartypants’.  I had much better support in G/B/r so I built that as my main pool.  With the couple minutes I had left I slapped together a U/W deck that would have splashed for some additional red removal if I had the time but my pool was such a quandary I simply ran out of time.

Nobody puts Niv in the sideboard! Except maybe Shawn…  Durr.

I ended up going 0-2, 1-2.  My 1-2 came after I sided in my U/W pool round 2 and stole a game with it.  The guy didn’t even notice I started playing with an un-sleeved deck all of a sudden.  How I lose to unobservant people like that I don’t know.  After dropping game 3 with that U/W deck in a tight fight I threw my stuff in my bag and power walked out of there.  I was running 15 minutes late for my trip back to the airport and I never like cutting arrival times close when you have to go through security on a Sunday.

So the end result of my Grand Prix points chase?

 

Grand Prix

8 Points x 8 Multiplier for Attendance = 64

160 Points24 Points Per Match Win x 4 = 96

TCGPlayer Sealed

4 Points x 3 Multiplier for Attendance = 12

12 Points

Grand Total for weekend = 172

Points entering weekend = 160

New points total = 332

Sunset over the Chicago skyline, great city! I’ll have to check it out more in the future!

So all in all, I think a pretty successful weekend.  I was sitting at 332, more than double what I had the week before and now closer to my goals.  I still was 68 short of the 400 I need for a 1 Round Bye and 168 away from the World Cup Qualifier invite but I am now in striking distance whereas before it was a hopeless cause.

Thanks for sticking with it if you read this far!  Make sure to come back for my next article with more points chase endeavors leading up to my deadline for the 400 points mark.

Twitt

Chasing Points – I Thought We Were Done With This?

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So as I alluded to last week prior to Grand Prix Chicago, I was in one small way attending the GP to chase some points.  As you may be aware the main event of a Grand Prix has an 8x multiplier on points.  Meaning for every point you earn either by attendance points or winning/drawing it is multiplied by 8.  So a round win earns you a whopping 24 points.  Just showing up to a 1000 person GP earns you a whopping 64.  64 Planeswalker Points for just showing up.  To put this in perspective, the average Friday Night Magic at Skyhaven, my local store, nets me 10 – 12 points if I do OK.  Pro Tour Qualifiers are an excellent source of points to at 5x multiplier, but until just last week we haven’t had one of those on the island. Check out my friend Trevor’s accounts of the Victoria PTQ event over at his blog www.boostervictim.com.

Why does it matter?

OK so it really doesn’t in the end.  A lot of players treat, rightfully so, Planeswalker Points as simply a method of tracking achievement points, like on Xbox Live.  Some don’t even know they even have points accumulated.  For those like myself though, the self identified ’casual competitive’ players, the points matter a lot.  Points earned in a given competitive quarter of the year go towards earning you valuable byes at Grand Prix.  In addition if you reach a certain plateau of points specific to your country, you can earn an invite to play in one of three qualifier events for the World Magic Cup.  While I really hold no allusions to winning a WMC qualifier and representing Canada in that event the notion that I am good enough to actually earn the invite and maybe have a shot is pretty much motivation enough.

I’ve never been a prolific athlete or really good enough at anything anyone has really cared about to be considered for any kind of competitive team.  Aside from some aborted time on a high school track team (I was pretty solid in 4×100 relay) my ability to compete for anything is largely limited to gaming events.  Poker previously being an area of aptitude that I enjoyed some very very low level success with.  So why the WMC?  Well like I said I know there are a lot of people better than I in this country that may show up to these things but you never know, on any given day it could be my day.  It’s also nice to have a goal when you are competitive and I have once again selected this as my goal for this season.

You may note I said ‘once again’, I in fact qualified after a pretty good run back in the Spring for the inaugural World Magic Cup qualifier season.  We had the last Canadian qualifier event in Calgary which sadly also fell right on the weekend I changed jobs.  This created a perfect storm of budget, timing and travel that made me completely unable to attend.  I was pretty disappointed I couldn’t fit it in.  Again not for any expectation of a great result but if you manage to finish high enough to earn something the vast majority of players do not, you kind of want to take advantage of it, even if just for the experience of it.

As Wizards of the Coast often does, they have been continually tweaking the organized play  aspects of their business in just about every area.  After the first World Magic Cup they announced changes to points requirements for both Grand Prix byes and the points needed to qualify for the WMC qualifier events.  Given our small region I knew that hitting even higher numbers than before would take some pretty unique circumstances to occur. Remember that job change that cost me the first crack at the WMC qualifiers?  Well it turns out it may be what helps me get another shot at a qualifier.

Prior to Grand Prix Chicago I looked up what the points are required to get an invite to a qualifier for next season.  500, up from the 400 points required last year for Canada and the United States.  I really don’t know about this number, it seems quite arbitrary when you consider the travel, regional sizing and population differences between the two countries, but I digress…

Those doing the math at home may see that anyone in my spot would need to basically win or top 4 every FNM for a several months plus hit up many drafts and other events to get there.  Given my work schedule and the game’s inherent variance, not likely to happen.  I’m a family man, full time job that requires a lot of travel and lets face it, I can’t always be sitting in a game store grinding points 8-12 at a time. I like to relax in my La-Z-Boy and drink some bevies like any normal guy.

After the new points season for 2012/2013 kicked off I went and missed nearly an entire month of play due to work.  That’s costly, but the bigger issue was no larger events, save from the PTQ in Victoria and a SCG event in Seattle that were anywhere close enough to be convenient.  Enter the work trip way out east.  Hey Grand Prix Chicago!  Modern, ugg.  Probably 1000+ players, yay!  Logging in to see my points, 160, not bad considering my travel schedule, but way off the goal.  I’ve had some reasonable results on the road in small events that have added up and my Game Day win added some good points.  Considering how flat my Summer was play wise it could be much, much worse.  Still to hit 500 points by the deadline next April, and the side goal of actually getting at least a bye back for Grand Prix’s next year (400 points) I was going to need a miracle, or at least a reasonable run at a Grand Prix.

So that’s my goal.  I’ll update this as we go along but let’s lay it out…

- 400 Points by December 16th = 1 Bye at Grand Prix’s Held in 2013 Season #1 & #2 (Dec. 17, 2012 to August 17, 2013)

- 500 Points by March 17, 2013 =  Invite to World Magic Cup Qualifier event

- Side Goal of top 50 in British Columbia for this Competitive Quarter (Up to December 16th, 2012) = Nothing but a warm feeling

In my next blog post, hopefully up in the next day or two, I’ll go over my GP Chicago experience and we’ll see if it’s going to be effective enough to help reach my goals above!

I know I promised the GP recap last week but alas I was sent away right after getting back and I accidentally left all my notes from the event at home, doh!

Stay tuned!  Can I make it?  Sitting at 160 Points the night before Grand Prix Chicago 2012, going to be tough!

 

Twitt

Super Kentucky Magic Fun Time!

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As I mentioned last week my travels for work took me to Louisville, Kentucky for 5 glorious days of southern belles, BBQ and….  Well actually 5 days of mainly staying in my hotel room after hours and drafting on MTGO.  Downtown Louisville it seems is under a resurgence.  Renovated and refaced turn of the century, or even older, buildings are abound. Many of those have somewhat cookie cutter, but trendy eateries.  I took the opportunity to eat in a few of these places and enjoyed much of what I had.  I was surprised at the lack of southern belles running around as well as there being anything to do downtown Kentucky after 6pm.  I was later told the belles were down in Louisiana so apparently I just wasn’t South enough.  I did manage to find some history lessons smattered around the downtown core at random spots, like this little gem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might think then this is a big long post about MTGO drafting and a bit list of the decks and picks I made.  You are partly right, I kept all that info but in the end the next section will be my aside into MTGO drafting of RTR.

I am hardly a prolific drafter but I would place my skill at above average if not from just studying the format and diving into the many great resources out there like Limited Resources or the drafts from the likes of LSV of Conley Woods over on Channel Fireball.  With that I’ve tended to do well at local drafts and on MTGO managed to enjoy the entertainment that comes with while generally managing to win a pack or two along the way.  RTR on the other hand has been handing me my ass online and for the life of my I don’t get it.  A recent rage post on Facebook I professed to just how bad I’m doing online in RTR, it’s appalling.  Live I’m doing OK, if not a bit mediocre, but online in swiss I am enjoying a current run of 1-2, 0-3, 1-2, 0-3, 3-0, 0-3, 0-3, 0-3.  In some of those events I’ve managed to muster but a single win.  Part of this is learning a mixed mana format like RTR.  The other part is that simply as a set it is such a great departure from what I have developed most of my drafting knowledge in, Innistrad. It’s taking a lot longer for me to right the ship.  In live play I have fared better going 3-1-1, 3-2, 2-2, and more recently 3-1, more on that in a bit.

What I have done then for a change of pace is to look at 4 pack sealed RTR.  This format is significantly different than draft.  The deck size, mix of cards and format itself make for some relatively quick and fun matches.  The prize payouts are a bit nicer for durdles like myself.  A 2-1 finish provides 3 packs, slightly better value by 1 ticket over a 2-1 finish in a swiss draft.  In addition there is that chance at a 4th rare.  Both my pools haven’t been great from a card value point of view but I have gone 2-1, 2-1 in both and was far more competitive in both events.  If you are not a draft ninja I’d highly recommend trying these sealed events out.  There are no 6 pack sealed RTR events even on MTGO right now so it’s the only sealed game in town. Exclusivity aside they are a lot of fun and certainly a great way to take a break from drafting if it isn’t going well.

If you made it this far here you are rewarded with actual magic content.  This is the deck I built in my last sealed event.  Oddly I felt this was a trash pool and probably an even worse build on my part but I went 2-1 with this and damn near 3-0 if not for some mana troubles against a VERY good pool in round 3.

Bluegrass Magic

Tucked away on the Outer Loop of Louisville, Bluegrass Magic is a tournament style magic shop, meaning they are the go to store in the area for big tournies.  I am definitely jealous of the players at this store for one simple fact, the space!  This place is huge!  Located in a strip mall over 10 miles from downtown the rent must be pretty reasonable.  The sheer space they can dedicate to play area for their collectible card games is easily 200 without adding any additional tables or chairs.  My conservative estimate is that if they wanted to, they could hit 300 and everyone would still have elbow room.  Aside from that their prices were reasonable on their product and the store was tidy and well run.  The owners were pleasant and definitely were dedicated to growing and fostering the magic scene in the area.  Proof was in the pudding, at the draft I was in on Thursday night there were no less than 3 new drafters and from my conversations at least 5 of the 10 that showed up hadn’t even played at the store before.  That’s some good new player development.

Grits were kissed

The nice thing about being a nomadic IT consultant is the ability to show up at places like this and aside from not drawling out my O’s like the rest of them, I can just sit down and play. Funny enough the more you travel the more you find the same people in each place.  The faces may be different but the personality types follow you store to store. It’s like some kind of bizarro DC universe, each store is a bit like seeing your friends back home but without the ability to randomly curse at them in a friendly sort of way.

So to the draft!  Here is what I managed to scrape up.  This isn’t my pick order but I’ll give you a minute to absorb this before we discuss what went down in the bluegrass state.

All the Beats.Dec

I received this absurd pool with some of these cards coming 4, 5, or even 6 picks down the line.  I got the smiter a third pick.  There were some very heavy green and white packs and thankfully the three players to my left were mucking around in Izzet and Rakdos so despite them endlessly bemoaning about what they were passing, I still ended up getting passed all the beats.

Round 1

Matt S. – Bant:  Matt was a pretty quiet player but I could tell how he shuffled and presented his deck he was definitely a local grinder at a minimum.  I was pretty damn pleased with my deck but knew I could be in for it.  All three games I really struggled on mana, one round I stalled on two mana for three turns.  Another I had no plains.  Game one despite missing three lands drops in a row I had him down to 5 health.  I realized at that point why he was playing Bant when he slammed Supreme Verdict.  I then drew 2 more land and he refilled his board in short order with a Isperia, Supreme Judge and smashed my face. Game 2 I still was slow on land but I curved right out and Matt scooped under the onslaught when he couldn’t get to 6 mana in time.  Game 3 we had a little bit of a scuffle but after missing a few land drops he simple crushed me and my silly deck was now 0-1.  Loss 1-2.

Round 2

Kyle W. – Golgari: This was Kyle’s first time drafting at this store, possibly his first time drafting, I didn’t clarify further.  He plays standard at the store but seemed to be fighting for cards down at the other end of the pod with the players immediately around him taking all the good black cards.  This was the first of two drubbings my deck would place on a player tonight.  This Selesnya deck was absurd, it had no issue stabilizing the board and going a bit longer, drawing down until Collective Blessing popped up and then typically in 2 turns that was it, especially if I had a couple birds in play from Seller of Songbirds or Eyes in the Sky.  Kyle’s deck was a bit all over the map and low on power, I rolled through pretty quick in two straight, now 1-1.  Win 2-0

Round 3

Steve K. – Azorious

I’ll keep this one short.  Steve had a pretty reasonable Azorious deck but I think he was pretty new to drafting in general, he was new to that store entirely.  Steve kept in good spirits as I ran through his deck, there wasn’t much of a fight here.  I’ve had the same issue running Azorious decks, especially ones as loaded as the one I drafted.  I also think Steve was the victim of our friend the Bant player in round 1.  He had cut off most of the good mythics and rares leaving Steve with nothing of consequence.  This round didn’t last long and I don’t think I took more than 10 points of damage over both games.  Now 2-1.  Win 2-0.

Round 4

Katie C. – Golgari

Katie is the girlfriend of a regular and due to people dropping from our super odd 10 person draft pod she got the pair up, or I got paired down depending on how you look at it.  Katie was 0-3, I was 2-1 at this point.  Katie has drafted before but was in a 4 way fight for the black and green on the other end of the pod.

Katie’s deck was pretty decent if not a bit unorthodox in how she built it utilizing cards like Shrieking Affliction.  It worked if only to force me to play a bit slower which my deck typically doesn’t mind.  She was able to blitz out the gate in game 1 stomping me before I could do anything off due to mana flood.  Her hasty Dreg Mangler halving my life total before I could recover from her stab wounds and other direct removal.  Games 2 and 3 Katie struggled a bit with her draws, still hanging in there but I was better able to curve out, dropping the insidious bomb Collective Blessing both games.  With that on the table and Katie unable to deal with the enchantment this was purely academic.  Wrapping it up at 3-1.  Won 2-1.

After the dust settles my terrible tie breakers land me in 4th, good for 3 packs.  Combined with a couple OK rares like Deathrite Shaman and Loxodon Smiter I made out pretty decently.

My summary for the draft?  Selesnya is great, there’s your big “duh we already knew that quote”.  I never get a chance to draft it as back home it’s usually being cut hard leaving me stuck in Azorius and in sad panda mode.  Now that I finally have I can finally see how the other half lives, turns out the grass really is greener (and whiter) on that side of the fence.  For the Collective!

That’ll about do it for this post.  I’d ramble on a bit longer but I am writing this on my way to Chicago for Grand Prix Chicago 2012.  This event is modern and that is probably the format I have the least experience in.  I’m guaranteed at least one win though due to the bye I earned off of Planeswalker Points last season.  So at worst I’ll pull some 100+ points just for showing up! That’ll nicely pad my current 160 points.  In addition I’ll get that sweet Foil Lotus Cobra and hopefully a playmat for my money.  I’m there to hopefully score some more points, take it all in (my third Grand Prix) and do some side events when I drop out.  Watch for a post on my Grand Prix results mid next week or check out my twitter feed @islandlooter for event updates.

Sidebar: Much ado about nothing, aka Much ado about Planeswalker Points

Though Planeswalker Points are largely not that useful or even paid attention to for most people it is useful for my casually competitive purposes.  Last year I made enough points to qualify for a World Magic Cup event but due to a change of jobs I had to miss the event in Calgary.

The points to qualify for 2013 in Canada have bumped up to 500 from 400 last year.  This makes this Grand Prix incredibly important points wise if I want to have a shot at attending this invite only qualifier tournament next Summer.  I’ll post a follow up on this topic in the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Twitt

RTR Game Day, a tale

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If you were “lucky” enough to read my intro/origin story post you’ll be familiar with the fact that I travel a lot for work.  One of the side benefits to this is being able to find local area stores to play in rather than sit in the hotel room watching Cartoon Network re-reuns.

Because of work I wasn’t able to play much if any standard just before and just after the RTR pre-release.  My next opportunity it would seem would be Return to Ravnica Game day at Skyhaven.  Thankfully my post RTR release work schedule had me down in the Seattle area, home of Wizards of the Coast and I’ll just say one of the more absurd areas I’ve been to for magic.  Game stores abound including the amazing Card Kingdom and pricing on Magic product and accessories that made this Canadian shake my head in disbelief as to how good they have it there.

So I knew I was going to play in Game Day, I had scheduled that with the wife, but what

was I going to play?  That was still a few weeks off but I needed something to play while on the road.  Literally 10 minutes before leaving to the airport I gathered an Azorious Humans
aggro deck and sleeved it up while I sat in the terminal.  I managed to run the deck 3 times at various free events in and around Lynnwood at The Comic Stop and Mugu Games respectively.

One thing I’ve learned is that after every major set rotation, playing humans has rarely been a bad idea. Everyone is completely screwing around with deck design and you can really exploit the linear and consistent strategy humans provides.  With a 1st place finish, a 2-2 drop under heavy mana flood and a 3rd place finish providing me $40 in store credit I snapped up a dual land and a couple discounted Sublime Archangel out of the case and headed back home to Victoria knowing that the humans build, while good, was very quickly going to lose it’s edge.  I still like this list but it’s effectiveness will certainly come and go in waves as standard’s meta fluctuates.  I am sure this will be a great deck to come back to after nearly every set release.  As they say, “There’s always money in the banana stand.”.

Azorius Aggro by Shawn

Back at home for a week with game day was fast approaching I new I had to refine the humans list or completely switch. Due to work and family commitments I had a small handful of days to actually test these decks.  My first opportunity was an Thursday RTR draft where a bunch of locals would probably have some standard decks in their bags just in case.  I showed up early and played against my friend Trevor of boostervictim.com who was running one of his signature G/W lists.  We split the two games we played, game 1 he completely trounced me using Champion of Lambholt. Game 2 he got me down to 3 or 4 before I stabilized, came back and started dismantling his board, finishing the job with a miracle Bonfire of the Damned.  Standard testing would have to wait though, draft was upon us.  After 5 rounds of a combined pod draft, which I do not recommend, I was lucky to be 3-2 with a U/W tempo fliers list. With a combined draft value of about $3.50 and feeling a bit salty in 8th place, I grabbed my single pack prize and headed home still in need of more testing.

Like many Magic players I look forward all week to head out and play FNM and often use it to try a different deck out.  This FNM however, in order to ensure wife points allowing me to draft Thursday and play Game Day Sunday I traded off FNM for both those events.  It did leave me without more seat time with this Jund list, something I really felt I needed.  After the kidlet was in bed I managed to sneak away for an hour down to Skyhaven to see if anyone had some byes or was just hanging around looking to play.  A short bit after getting there the last round pairings were up and Garret, a regular at the store, found himself facing an opponent who just up and left without actually dropping, so he offered to playtest with me.

Our “playtesting” basically consisted of Garret drawing god hand after god hand with his Mono Red aggro list and handing my ass to me in 4 out of 5 games including a mess of a game that went….

His Turn 1. Mountain, play Rakdos Cackler unleased, go

My turn 1. Shock Land tapped, go

His Turn 2. Swing with the cackler, mountain, Vexing Devil (take 4), Vexing Devil (pregnant pause, take 4).  10 points, ow.

My Turn 2. Land, Farseek, go

His Turn 3. Mountain, swing with the cackler, Vexing Devil? (rage flip the table in my head) (take 4….) searing spear, scoop.

I’d like to say this was completely unique but in the 5 games he had this near exact sequence happen twice. He did say the deck was incredibly streaky and he wished it drew that well during the event earlier.  Great, glad I could be there to witness this…  As FNM was starting to wrap up, I headed home to ponder my deck choice for the weekend.

After a busy Saturday with the family I checked the Star City Games top 16, noted the plentitude of G/W decks and re-animator.  Through watching twitter and other local store chatter on Facebook between Skyhaven Games and Yellowjacket Comics, the other MTG store downtown, I knew Re-animator was going to be present.  I had been really questioning my Jund build or at least my comfort level running it.  At 1 am I decided to sleeve up an impromptu G/W deck for some gold fishing.  A half hour later I was dealing out this list below and really liking the draws.

Selesnya Midrange by Shawn

Next morning I was sitting down at Skyhaven, pulling hands off of either deck, overhearing some other players chatting about their decks.  At the call for round 1 I put the Jund deck away without thinking and that was obviously my gut instinct.  I was going G/W knowing that it stood a chance to get there, happy with a top 8 I was shooting for the playmat!

I was still considering writing this stuff down so below is my recap from memory, in future events I’ll try to keep better notes.

Return to Ravnica Game Day Swiss

R1 – Paris – 3 Colour Epic Experiment Deck.  Paris was cycling pretty hard but my deck just went off Game 1 pairing up Rancor, Silver Blade Paladin and Sigarda, Host of Herons for some pretty crazy beats.  Game 2 was more of the same.  Paris managed to get a little deeper and I really felt I was only in this game by a single draw.  His last dig through his deck gave nothing but mana and he scooped it up. Won 2-0

R2 – Noel – Reanimator (?) My deck ran just as strongly as Round 1, I just didn’t see very much of his deck. Won 2-0. This deck can be completely brutal.  I went 4 straight games without taking a single bit of combat damage.  I was feeling good and was already well on my way to the Top 8 berth.

R3 – Christina – B/R Zombies. Won 2-0, Christina took me to the brink in both games with her very solid zombie build.  Christina is a relatively new player but she is getting pretty good and her deck is solid.  We chatted after the last game with Cody from the store about some plays that would have very likely cemented game 2 for her.  3-0 / 6-0 I was feeling pretty strong.

R4 – Dustin – Bant control. This was an epic match with me blitzing Dustin in very short order game 1.  Post sideboard as it typically does with control, the matchup switched quickly to Dustin.  Game 2 I mulled down to 4 for the first time I can ever recall in sanctioned tournament magic.  Despite this I managed to actually get a board going and get a bit of damage in against Dustin,  Alas he drew a punishing number of Terminus and Supreme Verdict and I came up short, his planeswalkers tying up the board.  With 15 minutes left to play game 3, I quickly shuffled up to try and get a chance to run game 3 back.

Game 3 was a lot like game 2 however I drew slightly better creatures and Dustin struggled a little bit on his sweeper draws.  Eventually though the tide of sweepers took their toll and I started to flood out.  Near the end I miracle an Entreat the Angels for 5, 4/4 fliers.  All I had to do was fade a sweeper and I should have this wrapped up.  Dustin draws, passes it back after lamenting the presence of my Grafdigger’s Cage on the board.

These kinds of cards are key against these decks, it really puts a hurt on their speed and helps force them to top deck mode a bit quicker. It was at this inflection point where I could attack and jump forward in this game.  I had decide how to attack with my angels.  I could swing at Dustin, taking him back down from his lofty life total or swing in and kill his Tamiyo and Garruk Relentless.  I think I chose wrong here, I decided to get some damage in in case he played a sweeper letting his planeswalkers go..

My error in this game was that while the damage was important, it became too easy for him to recover from that miracle Terminus he cast the next turn.  I managed to get some bodies out but his Tamiyo, the Moon Sage managed to keep any that mattered pinned down.  Time was called and we went to turns.  I was basically in stay alive mode as he started generating wolves off of Garruk.  I managed a knight off of Selesnya Charm that with another creature could maybe keep me alive through Dustin’s last turn, turn 5.  Any creature or buff would do the trick.

Sadly my last draw was a Gavony Township.  I could buff my knight token to 3 but it wouldn’t matter, Dustin could just fight my knight with Garruk even with a pump and leave me with no blockers.  I play the township and pass it back.  Dustin does just that and swings in for exact damage and I lose on turn 5.  I dropped this round 1-2.  This was a tough loss given the past three rounds but I was still feeling decent about the deck, Bant control is very well suited for the current meta and it showed here.

Time for an aside here.  One thing I can express that is very important is to make sure to keep hydrated and eat during tournaments, even shorter ones.  This one was going into round 5 and it had been a long while since I had ate.  I was really starting to feel it and with the length of this last round I didn’t have time to grab a bite before we jumped into round 5.  Your reasoning and play can take a huge hit when you’re blood sugar drops, make sure to have a granola bar or banana to keep you going, it makes a huge difference for me I’m finding.

R5 – Ben – Jund aggro. Ben’s a long time player and has a penchant for building interesting decks and trying to attack the field from different angles. Even till the end I called this mono red but it was in fact a Jund list utilizing light splashes of black and green for Abrupt Decay and rancor. Game 1 he blitzed me so fast my head spun.  This was basically a replay of my testing against Garret’s mono red list.  I kept way too slow of a hand, took some repeated beats, burn to the face and that was that.

Game 2 I side in some Centaur Healers and start off really quick.  Ben gets stuck on land and my deck curves out quick ramping into Loxodon Smiter on turn 2 and Sigarda, Host of Herons on turn 4.  Ben scoops shortly after and were on to game 3. Game 3 I managed to make my first really bad play mistake, ensuring my loss.  Ben felt he had it either way with his hand which was basically as loaded as game 1.  At minimum my play mistake made it a more of a certainty.

With my blood sugar getting low and in a fog I made a bad mistake attacking Ben with my rancor equipped Loxodon Smiter into 2 Ash Zealots, doh, hi there first strike.  Two turns later and I die without my much needed target for my Wolfir Silverheart. Lost 1-2

I was feeling completely deflated after going 3-0 and then losing a tough one against Dustin and punting against Ben. For a change I was on the losing end in short order, I try to avoid it but I bought a Coke and snack from the counter, slammed that back as I waited for results.

The final standings for swiss were posted and…. I ended up in 5th, phew.  Top tie breakers at the 9 point level and ready to do battle in the top 8.

Top 8
R6 – Ronnie – G/W control or maybe another midrange (?).  Ronnie stumbled a bit but my deck returned to form and with me seeing straight I ran him through with little delay, my Rancor equipped Loxodon Smiter, Angel, Wolfir Siverheart board winning game 1 in short order.  Game 2 I thought Ronnie was going to take.  He managed to get out not one but two Thragtusk and was utilizing a bounce package with Cloudshift to play shenanigans with Thragtusk.  I assembled a combo of Loxodon Smiter Sublime Archangel and Silver Blade Paladin, quickly smashing his inflated life total in under 15 minutes. Won 2-0.

The snack had made a difference, I was feeling much more in tune with the deck again and the fog had cleared!

R7 – Paris – Much like our match in Round 1 he wasn’t able to get much going.  He did take down Dustin in 2 games the previous round.  I really wish I had been able to see this as I never did see Paris’s deck combo off.

Game 1 was uneventful, Game 2 he repeatedly mulled no land hands all the way down to a 2 land/card hand.  By the time I finished him off he had ramped up to 7 mana but hadn’t drawn enough action to make a difference.  He scooped it up and I was on to the finals.  Won 2-0.

R8 – George Blank – Mill. George is one of those players that primarily likes playing decks that are fun, sometimes with wildly varying levels of competitiveness.  George’s pick for this event apparently was a solid choice as he ran through the Swiss finishing 4-1 and met me in the finals.  There isn’t much to say here, my deck was on fire and George couldn’t manage to get the main mill engine or draw any control and we spin through two quick games.  Taking the round 2-0, I became a Return to Ravnica Game Day Champion!

Final Record 6-2 Match / 12-4 Games

Wrapping it up

Nut draws with this deck are Forest, Temple Garden, Arbour Elf, Silverblade, Loxodon Smiter and one 4, 5 or 6 drop. More than a couple turn 4 kills or swing for 18+ are easy with this deck. The two entreats were a Sunday AM modification to the deck and I have to say I was pretty pleased with them in the deck.  They’re not just for control anymore!

I never once sided in the Restoration Angel, never felt I needed it.  I now see it was a mistake not to bring those in against at least Dustin’s deck.  They, much like a Wolfir Avenger, are the perfect plays post sweep and could have very well allowed me to steal one of those two games against control.  Hindsight and all that.

Changes to the G/W list would include removing Odric, Master Tactician out of the side and including a 3rd Sigarda, she is just so good in the the current meta.  I am glad I picked these up under $10!  The Armada Wurm are quite solid but they didn’t see a lot of play.  I may consider removing one of those and some other card from the side for a couple Faith’s Shield.  Useful in a lot of decks that utilize spot removal like Jund, Zombies and even Bant/U/W with the tempo-rific Azorius Charm.

So after participating in 3 Game Days I won the mat and 10 packs for 1st. Also had feature matches round 1 and 2 which Skyhaven provides a pack for the winner.  It’s no grand prix cheque but as one of the largest game day’s the store has had, it felt pretty darn good.

Thanks for reading this far, watch for a RTR draft snapshot post in a few days.  Next week is Louisville where I will be drafting at a local store and then heading up to Grand Prix Chicago for my feeble attempt at Modern and likely a bunch of limited side events.

 

Twitt

So this is my blog / super hero origin story

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Hi there!  My name is Shawn or as the title of the blog would suggest Island Looter.  That’s my handle on Twitter and MTGO as I start covering my play on there.  I haven’t been doused in gamma rays giving me cool powers but bear with me as I ramble through my origin story.

As a little background I am an amateur Magic The Gathering player, actively playing since about a week or so before the New Phyrexia pre-release weekend.  I have actually played Magic for much much longer, but in such small amounts as to not really matter that much in today’s world.  I started with a 5th edition starter pack and some random boosters including an Arabian Nights pack.  Sadly best card I got from those packs was a Swords to Plowshares, but it was fun playing some jank decks against my brother over the kitchen table.  I didn’t get to play much due to work and the cards went into a box, not seeing light until May of 2011 when I dug them back out to see if I hit any gold.  The story that follows covers a bit of how I got here.

From my modest Magic beginnings along the way I played the varied Magic digital titles including the awesome Microprose Magic: The Gathering title from 1997 to get my fix.  I was even a beta tester of the original Magic Online way back when.

Ultimately like many returning magic players it was Duels of the Planeswalkers that drew me back in.  After years of only flitting about the fringes of Magic I was about to get thrown in pretty hard.

The Hook

As an IT Consultant I get sent to cities all over and while that often doesn’t do much for my home, family or gaming time it does let me meet interesting people.  Enter Mike M., a tournament organizer from the Vancouver area that has been doing this stuff forever.  In the past Mike M. has seen his fair share of tournaments and probably run even more.  Mike was working at the client site I was at and in our daily interaction started shooting the breeze about everything.  It came out that he did the area events for Magic, I of course was familiar and he really got my interest peaked.  The project was busy but one lunch before the end I brought a jank free 30 card starter deck I got at PAX the year before modified with some bulk singles my brother and I split for $10 and he promptly smashed me.  He let me try out a Kuldotha Rebirth deck and I fumbled badly through that, those cards did a lot more stuff than I was used to, but the hook was set.

Line

Finally work slowed down a little and I got a short term project in my home city of Victoria, BC. I decided to see what was going on in my local area.  The Wizards Locator pointed me to a game store not 3 minutes from my house that I had no idea existed.  I originally had wanted to try out the D&D Encounters session as that had always been an area of interest but in my conversations with Michael L. the proprietor he mentioned that their DM and retired but they had drop in game nights and had FNM.  I asked what that was and after he described it I recalled my conversation with my friend Mike M. the TO from before and the ads on Duels.

The next Tuesday I drop down to the store, Skyhaven Games for it’s free drop in game night.  I find a few nice younger gamers trying out a new strategy board game.  I join in for a match and had a good time, all the while eyeing the packs of cards across the store.  I walk over after and start taking to Michael about what would be needed to play at FNM.  He points me towards the event decks he has, citing the mono red one being pretty good.  I snap buy it and some card sleeves and make my way home to check it out.

Into the Breach
1  Contested War Zone
21  Mountain

22 lands

2  Goblin Bushwhacker
2  Goblin Guide
4  Goblin Wardriver
1  Iron Myr
4  Memnite
4  Ornithopter
4  Signal Pest
1  Spikeshot Elder

22 creatures

 2  Darksteel Axe
2  Devastating Summons
2  Galvanic Blast
4  Kuldotha Rebirth
4  Lightning Bolt
2  Panic Spellbomb

16 other spells

I get home that night and tell my wife about the event and gained the wife approval to check out the FNM.  We’re catching up on shows missed while I was on the road and I sleeve up the cards, barely even reading them but recognizing a few of them from my matches with Mike M.  I show up Friday not even having shuffled or looked at the deck, work kept me busy and those with a family know how it can be.

Sinker

My first match is against a young guy named Paul D.  Paul has a really easy going attitude and I have told him many times since that if it wasn’t for him I may not have stuck with it.  Most of my opponents that first night were great sports as I fumbled my way through the event. I am sure made more mistakes than would be normally legal but I got a lot of help and advice through the event.  The environment at Skyhaven typically fosters new players and the store has a good rep for that, It can really pay off as the player base has grown considerably in the past year as the game has grown.  Sadly the event was long enough ago that I can’t recall all the ins and outs but that deck was fast enough that I wrapped up that first FNM in 4th, good for a few packs.  If I was hooked before this is the tug on the reel that sets it.

Turns out Kuldotha Rebirth was an excellent choice at that exact moment, finished 4th, 3rd, 7th, 4th in the first month and had a blast, accumulating a few cards and slowly improving my deck on an extreme budget as I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay with it long term.  Even luckier operating on a budget with this deck was even easier as I came across Jacob Van Lunen’s now defunct but very good article on modifying the deck on a budget.

Evolving Event Decks

As you can suspect since I’m here writing this now surprisingly long intro article, I am still playing and Wizards has gotten their fair share of my spending money.  I have dove in full bore and along the way met some amazing Magic personalities, attended 2, soon to be 3 Grand Prix, two PAX Magic parties and taken down a number of small events around my store and others as I travel.

Magic is an incredible game and I really appreciate what it has brought to my life as a long time gamer.  An amazing community and personalities just round out the mix.

So what to expect from this blog?  I’m pretty much going to use this to talk about my adventures in magic, events I go to and things I see and do.  Long term I’d love to get more involved in the community through streaming, maybe a podcast.  For now this will be my home in the community and I would like to extend a big thanks to Neal (wrongwaygoback) for providing a portal like this and allowing a player like myself a small footprint into this great community.

Stay tuned for my Return to Ravnica Game Day report, a recent RTR draft and maybe even a recorded draft stream if time allows.  In a couple weeks I’ll cover some events as I travel around the US including a planned draft in Louisville, Kentucky leading up to Grand Prix Chicago as I travel for work.

To wrap this up I’ll just underline the fact I am an amateur player and I will make all kinds of mistakes along the way.  I appreciate any of you that take the time to check out, comment and enjoy the stories and videos I make along the way.  This likely won’t be any phenomenon like FNM Hero but at minimum we can share this game we love and help each other along the way.

If you made it this far you’re already my favorite person, thanks and look forward to my Game day post in the next day!

Shawn

IslandLooter

Twitt