As I sit here in my home in Michigan, I can’t help but feel that the past two and a half weeks spent traveling through California and attending professional Magic events were both amazingly fun and severely disappointing. Fun, in the sense that California was a blast, and I got to take in many of the sights during my stay—but disappointing because of the decidedly mediocre finishes I made at GP San Diego and the Magic World Championship.

In any case, this article is going to walk through the past two weeks, the tournaments, and my afterthoughts about what could have been done differently and how sometimes performance doesn’t live up to expectation.

SAN DIEGO

I flew into San Diego with my girlfriend Rebecca, who accompanied me on my travels through San Diego and even took a shot at playing in the GP. The weather there was beautiful, especially for November, and seventy-five degrees and sunny was a welcome change to Michigan’s seasonal norm of 40 and sleeting. We spent the days leading up to the Grand Prix checking out the local flavor, beaches, restaurants, the San Diego Zoo, and LEGOLAND to name a few.

Before we even knew it, the Grand Prix tournament was upon us, and it was time to get down to the business of playing Magic. I was really happy with my sealed pool, which afforded me the opportunity to play a very good U/B/R control style deck.

1 Sever the Bloodline
1 Devil’s Play
1 Harvest Pyre
2 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Think Twice
2 Brimstone Volley
1 Grasp of Phantoms
1 Silent Departure
1 Moan of the Unhallowed

2 Murder of Crows
1 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
2 Screeching Bat
1 Diregraf Ghoul
1 Armored Skaab
1 Civilized Scholar
1 Deranged Assistant
1 Undead Alchemist
1 Moon Heron
1 Delver of Secrets

7 Island
6 Swamp
4 Mountain

The deck was basically a U/B control deck that was splashing Devil’s Play, 2 Brimstone Volley, and a Harvest Pyre. The unfortunate thing was the heavy red commitment the flashback on Devil’s Play required, and though I considered simply writing off the ability to flashback Devil’s Play and using it as a Blaze, ultimately it seemed worth playing the extra red. The ability to flashback Devil’s Play in the late game, after drawing much of my deck with Forbidden Alchemy, was often the difference between being able to finish off close games and not. So, my insight on splashing this particular card is that it is well worth having a plan to get the re-buy, as Blaze with flashback is SOOOOO much better than just Blaze; it isn’t unreasonable to get 15 or 16 damage out of that card…

I felt that the deck I had been passed and built was really, really good and felt that the expectation for a deck like this, starting with three byes, was easily 5-1 or better.

I sat down against my first-round opponent and easily won. He was playing U/W evasion and relied heavily upon putting creature-boosting enchantments and equipment on his evasive critters. Unfortunately, a deck such as this finds itself quickly behind against removal.dec.

The second round was extremely frustrating. I was paired up against a green-black deck playing black for a lot of removal and green for Garruk Relentless. While his deck had very good removal, the quality of his creatures was very low. It seemed that with my blue card draw, plus removal, plus difficult-to-answer guys, I should have a very good match up here. Unfortunately, I lost the match by mulliganing to five in games one and three because my mana was bad.

I put a couple together in a row and needed to 1-1 in the last two rounds in order to make day two. In round eight, I was paired against AJ Sacher, who had a very similar Grixis control deck, and lost a very weird match against him. I boarded in Selhoff Occultist, and we dueled Occultists in the second game; I got very far ahead in land drops, as he was borderline mana-screwed, but the random milling over the course of the game hit literally all of my quality threats, making it nearly impossible for me to actually win the game! I lost, despite the fact that aside from simply never drawing a quality win condition, there was almost no way I could lose.

Now, I was in a situation where if I lost the last round of day one, I could actually miss day two, with a deck that, at the start of the day, I felt would be underachieving if it lost even two.

Fortunately, I was able to get there in the last round of the day and made day two by the skin of my nose.

GP DAY TWO

Day two started off pretty well. I felt that my draft deck was pretty good. It was an R/G beatdown deck that featured two Reckless Waifs and two Brimstone Volleys. I lost the first round to a very good white deck that featured multiple copies of Mausoleum Guard and drew both frequently.

However, I was able to get the next two in a row and was sitting in pretty good shape at X-3. Unfortunately, this was when things really tanked.

In the first draft I was sitting directly down river of Reid Duke (who I perceived to be the strongest player in my pod), and in the second draft, I was being passed to by Conley Woods, probably the strongest player in that pod. The obvious downside to sitting downstream of the best drafter in the pod is that they are much more likely to pick up on the most open colors being passed and be in those colors.

The second draft literally couldn’t have gone worse for me. The guy sitting directly to my left opened Daybreak Ranger. I decided that better than fight him in pack two over green, since he was obviously going to be green, I’d pass it and look for either black, white, or both and snap up an Unburial Rites. I basically used pack one to cut both black and white and shipped the absolute nuts green down river.

In pack two, the guy who opened up Daybreak Ranger opened Bloodline Keeper, took it, and cut off black on the pass back…

In the third pack, I opened up Mayor of Avabruck, and Conley opened Gatstaf Shepard, and the guy to my left looked super excited, so I slammed the Mayor (my draft can’t get any worse, right?) and gave him a quick look while we were counting out the cards to pass, as if to say: “Oh, you thought you were going to get this one?”

I was an awful three-color B/G/W midrange deck that I felt had a legitimate shot of performing well. I had the Mayor, which could win games all by itself, and I also had two Unburial Rites and two Mausoleum Guards, which is quite the combo. Unfortunately, I drew the card Mausoleum Guard exactly zero times in three rounds and ended up with the 1-2 record my bad deck justly deserved—finishing exactly one win out of the money.

I was disappointed but not really for very long, as Rebecca and I had a busy week planned leading up to San Francisco that I was very much looking forward to, and we had much packing to do before Monday morning. On our way to San Francisco, we drove through the Sequoia Redwood National Park (which was astoundingly amazing) and also visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was equally fantastic. After a few days of sightseeing, we arrived at Fort Mason, and I signed in for Worlds where I received a Garruk Relentless T-Shirt (which unlike the Liliana one from PT Philadelphia, I wouldn’t be completely embarrassed to wear…) and a draft set.

WORLDS

DAY ONE

I am not going to lie; I don’t play very much Standard at all. I basically brewed up a U/W Blade deck that was an amalgamation of Edgar Flores and Alex Bertoncini Blade decks from the SCG Open in Nevada. The only major change that I made was to play a package of Phantasmal Images and Sun Titans instead of Gideon and a few cheap spells. I am a big fan of both of these cards, especially fighting together, and I felt that they both did interesting things that would benefit my strategy.

Here is what I played.

U/W Blade

Brian Demars

Test deck on 12-04-2011

Standard

Creatures (16)

Lands (26)

Spells (18)

Sideboard

Magic truly is a game of inches.

All my matches in Standard were extremely close and came right down to the wire. Going into the last round, I was 3-2 playing against Ben Swartz with Tempered Steel. It was the last time I was over 500.

I mulliganed to five in game one and got promptly crushed (there is a theme to California, where every time I mulligan to five, I lose). I won game two, and then game three was pretty weird. I was pretty much ahead and thought I was going to win and drew five straight lands in a row, which allowed Ben to get back into the game, come from behind, and win.

I ended the first day of Worlds with a disappointing 3-3 record, but I really enjoyed the way that most of my matches were very close regardless of matchup.

I played against:

1. U/B Control, win 2-0

2. U/W Humans/Tokens, Loss 0-2

3. Solar Flare, Loss 1-2

4. U/B Control, Win 2-1

5. Wolf Run Green, Win 2-1

6. Tempered Steel, Loss 1-2

DAY TWO

I drafted a pretty decent R/G splash W beatdown deck that featured three Brimstone Volleys. Unfortunately, the high hopes that I had for this deck didn’t come through. I had gotten a pretty bad case of food poisoning the night before, and I didn’t really bring my A-game on Friday.

My first round was really telling of my experience of narrow defeats at the World Championship. I was playing against Richard Bland in the first round on day two, and we each had a creature in play holding off the other and one card in hand. I flashbacked Creeping Renaissance and brought back seven creatures from my graveyard to my hand. That, ladies and gentlemen, is +7 cards. He drew for the turn, slammed down Olivia Voldaren, and the game was literally over on the spot, as I had no way to beat it.

Game two was more of the same. He was at four, empty-handed, and I had a creature in play. On the last possible turn of the game, he drew Olivia and won the game. It doesn’t get any narrower than that!

I won my next round and lost the next, which put me just below .500 going into the last draft.

I drafted a really cool R/U aggressive deck that featured 3 Delver of Secrets, 2 Reckless Waif, 2 Brimstone Volley, and 2 Spectral Flight.

Unfortunately, mulligans got the better of my second deck, and I could muster only a disappointing 1-2 run with the deck.

After two days, I ended up at 5-7.

Interesting fact: in four drafts I first-picked exactly one of the rares that I opened… a Mayor of Avabruck that wasn’t in my colors; that is awkward.

DAY THREE

Modern was the format I was most looking forward to playing. Before I got too deep into my testing for Philadelphia, I had a Mystical Teachings deck that I felt was really good but was basically 0% against the combo Cloudpost decks that rose up as the metagame spoiler.

With Cloudpost banned, I felt that it might be the right time to play Mystical Teachings. Here is what I played:

4CC Teachings

Brian Demars

Test deck on 12-04-2011

Modern

Creatures (6)

Lands (26)

Spells (28)

Sideboard

I played against Bob Maher playing his U/R Storm deck in the first round of day three, and he made pretty quick work of me. In game one, he Grapeshotted me for five and made twelve Goblin tokens on the second turn on the play. In the third game, he was able to beat me with exact mana digging for a Grapeshot at one life while I had lethal on board…

The games were fun, and it’s always a pleasure to get a chance to play against the best players of all time.

I went 3-3 with the control deck but could have pretty easily been 4-2 or better if a couple of things went my way. I lost a match to a RUG deck where I drew literally 22 of my 26 lands in my deck and only drew 10 spells. I got 20ed by his one copy of Punishing Fire and just didn’t draw any business all game long…

Here is what I played against and how I fared:

Bob Maher, U/R Storm, Loss 0-2

Jason Ford, Jund, Win 2-0

RUG Control, Loss 1-2

Brian Kowal, Jund, Loss 1-2

U/R Splinter Twin, Win 2-1

Affinity, Win 2-0

I thought it was really interesting that my deck was really geared to beat Zoo, which was the most played deck in the format, and that I didn’t play against a single Zoo deck. I must admit that my deck was not well equipped to deal with Brian Kowal’s Sprouting Thrinaxes. However, that is a problem that can be pretty easily fixed.

I finished up 8-10 overall just barely missing top 200 and the irrelevant extra pro point.

I have never had the opportunity to play in the Magic World Championships, and I feel very fortunate that I finally got a chance, especially since this is very likely the last one ever. It was really exciting to get to meet and play against so many players from all around the world, and it is amazing when one is in that environment to see how huge the game of Magic has become over the years.

Although I feel as though I had a couple of really tough tournaments in the past two weeks, I still had a blast. Losing really makes one appreciate how sweet winning is!

Cheers,

Brian DeMars