So, about the suit…
In January, some friends of mine from out of town were visiting and I took them up to Vanguard in Hollywood to see Markus Schulz. After a long night at the club, a few of us decided to walk off our hangovers on Rodeo Drive the next day. Wandering through the various exorbitantly overpriced shops on the street, I found that even the bastion of American opulence had not gone untouched by economic crisis. The Bernini store was having what seemed to be a going out of business sale, with signs advertising huge discounts everywhere. I felt like if there was ever a time for me to buy something completely outlandish on Rodeo drive, that time was now.
I saw the suit and knew I had to have it. It was just too great not to own, especially when the salesman noticed my interest and almost begged me to buy it. I could sense he was desperate to make a sale, so I kept playing along that I wasn’t sure, and eventually he not only dropped the price well below the posted sales but offered to eat the tax and charge me nothing for tailoring if I’d just pay in cash. Sold.
As I walked out of the store with my ridiculous purchase, one of my friends told me that now all I needed was an excuse to wear it. But I already knew what my excuse would be.
And about the song…
At every tournament I’ve played in as far back as I can remember, I’ve listened to music before the start of every match. It’s a ritual that helps me rid myself of distractions and focus on the match at hand. I pick a single song for each tournament, and I have never used the same track more than once. It’s important for my ritual that I pick the right song — it has to have the right kind of energy, can’t be too short, or it will finish before my match starts, but can’t be too long either, or it will get cut off when I have to start playing. This whole process has gotten much easier since the invention of the iPod, I assure you.
The Tuesday before PT: Honolulu, a friend of mine asked if I’d heard the new Infected Mushroom song. I had not. It had only been released that day. When she linked me to clip online, I knew immediately that I had found my song for the tournament. Not only did the song have the perfect energy and was it the perfect length, but it was called “Smashing the Opponent.” It was a sign.
And the tournament itself…
I arrived at the tournament site, suit on and iPod in hand, ready to smash some opponents and look sharp doing it. After the player meeting and posing for quite a few pictures, it was off to the proverbial races.
Round 1 — Eli Priest (Jund Control)
I played against Jund Control so many times in the Constructed portion of the tournament that my memory of many of the games runs together. I wish I had the excuse that I lost my notes from the tournament, but the reality is that I have the notebook I used to keep life totals right in front of me, and my own handwriting is so bad that it’s hard for me to make out what half of the things say.
I do remember that the first game of this match was pretty much the textbook example of why I ended up playing the Constructed deck that I did. I open with a Tidehollow Sculler and see a hand of Thrinax, Terminate, and triple Bituminous Blast. I take the Terminate and follow up with one Ethersworn Canonist and then another, turning his hand into a mess of overcosted removal. He plays the Thrinax and then a Putrid Leech to stop my ground beatdown, but an Esper Stormblade and Thopter Foundry grind his life down before he is able to get any value out of his Cascades.
I sideboard out Glaze Fiend, Court Homonculus, Esperzoa, and some Shieldmages for the package of Soul Manipulation/Sanctum Gargoyle/Countersquall/Zombie Outlander. The reasoning for this (not that it matters much, since no one will ever play this format again) is that after sideboarding the Jund decks tend to have more cheap removal like Magma Spray, Jund Charm, or Viridian Renegades, so every card needs to pull its weight, whereas before sideboarding you can just beat them with a fast Glaze Fiend assault. The Zombies give you more evasion that is harder for their deck to kill, as well as giving you the ability to play a bit of defense against Putrid Leech and Thrinax if the games go long and you have to play attrition with the draft deck plan of Soul Manipulation and Sanctum Gargoyle.
Anyway, game 2 I end up mulliganing into a decent hand, and look like I’m in good shape when my Tidehollow Sculler catches a Terminate and leaves him with nothing but lands. He peels Viridian Renegades off the top, however, and puts me on the back foot without much of an offense when he can kill my next creature as well. Eventually he sticks a Broodmate Dragon and I die in short order.
Game 3 goes much better for me, as now it’s his turn to mulligan and I come out fast with evasion creatures. He can’t keep up and quickly dies.
Matches 1-0
Round 2 – Jurgen Hahn (Jund Control)
I recognize Jurgen from his previous stint on the Canadian National team and mention it to him, and he corrects me that he was on the team twice! I tell him my bad, and he says it’s not a huge accomplishment, but hey — I’ve never managed to win a quarterfinal match at Nationals. Our match is relaxed and friendly, but not terribly close. In the first game I get a very aggressive start with a pair of Esper Stormblades and a Thopter Foundry. Jurgen taps 1GB and reaches for a card in his hand, then pauses and shakes his head as he’s forced to use Maelstrom Pulse to turn one of my Stormblades into a Thopter rather than destroy them both. I start feeding Borderposts to the Foundry and he dies a few turns later. Game 2 when Jurgen leads with Forest, Exotic Orchard, I play Tidehollow Sculler off a Borderpost and see Terminate, two Maelstrom Pulses, and Thrinax. I never replay my Swamp or another Black source, and the game ends a few turns later.
After the match, Jurgen tells me that he’d been holding three Broodmate Dragons in game 1 but just couldn’t draw a sixth mana source. He boarded one out for game 2 to keep his curve down, but said he wasn’t sure if it was the right call because fliers seem so important against my deck. I told him that I’m not entirely sure what the right answer is for his exact list, but that Broodmate Dragon is the one card I really don’t want to see hit play on the other side of the table, because it makes the game so much harder to win, so I’d probably keep it in. Interestingly, the Enlisted Wurm/Broodmate Dragon debate in the Naya/Jund decks probably served us very well in the tournament, because Enlisted Wurm is pretty terrible against us, while Broodmate is quite good.
Matches 2-0
Round 3 — Paul Cheon (Five-Color Control)
We had a fake feature match that got covered in the end, so those of you watching the coverage missed our stellar game 1. I had a decent start that got slowed by a number of removal spells and a Wall of Denial, then I just started drawing into nothing but mana sources. Paul Identity Crisis’d me twice in the game, both times hitting three land. I had drawn 19 of my 25 mana sources and Paul 20 of his 28 when he finally found a Cruel Ultimatum and put me out of my misery.
Games 2 and 3 were very different. In game 2, my deck did what it was supposed to do and I ran over Paul with an army of Master of Etherium-boosted creatures. In game 3, Paul mulliganed twice and my turn 2 Tidehollow Sculler revealed two Bloodbraid Elves, Sprouting Thrinax, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and Thraximundar, with no more land. I managed to pull that one out. After the match, Paul lamented the fact that he’d cut Infest from his sideboard because he didn’t expect anyone to play rush decks — a belief that seemed to have been shared by many of the competitors in the tournament, and one that made me feel very confident about my chances.
Matches 3-0
Round 4 – Ruben Snijdewind (Jund Control)
See what I mean about the Jund Control matches running together? This match had a few things that stood out, however. In the first game, I double mulliganed on the play, but managed a pair of Esper Stormblades. My opponent’s draw was full of Thrinaxes and Blightnings and similar useless cards, and his life total drops by threes, then by sixes, until he just fell over dead. Evasion creatures — not just for Limited anymore.
Game 2 was much closer according to my life totals, with him dropping to 8 before I started losing Broodmate Dragon sized chunks of life until I had none left. Game 3 was his turn to double mulligan, and my turn to punish his Exotic Orchard by never giving him the mana he needs.
As an aside, that last bit was one of the most amusing things to me about playing this deck — the ability to cripple an opponent’s mana if they relied on Exotic Orchard. With such a high percentage of the tournament playing Jund, Naya-Jund, or Five-Color Control, Exotic Orchards were everywhere, and many people simply assumed that their Orchards would give them at least Red or Green mana. With this deck, not only could they never get Red or Green mana with it, you can often keep them off White or Black by paying attention to the lands you play, as long as you have Borderposts, and if you have enough Borderposts you can sometimes make their Orchards give no mana at all. While these look like purely luck based non-games when you read about or watch them, punishing Exotic Orchard was actually a big incentive to play this deck in the first place.
Matches 4-0
Round 5 – Jose Cabezas Munoz
This match was memorable if for no other reason than our drastically conflicting styles. While I sat down in my suit, Jose was decked out in a wifebeater, shorts, and flip flops. One of these things is not like the other.
Fortunately, that isn’t the only thing I remember about the match, despite the fact that my notes consist of a single word. In the first game I got out to a fast start with Glaze Fiend and a few other creatures and got him down to 12 with fliers before he played Ajani (there’s my note!) and Helix’d away one of my non-Fiend men. I played two more artifacts that turn and hit him down to 11. He played something that was not Broodmate Dragon and also did not kill Glaze Fiend, and I drew Thopter Foundry to Ravager-Affinity him in one attack.
In the second game, Jose opened with Exotic Orchard, Exotic Orchard. I did not cooperate, playing Borderpost, Borderpost, Borderpost, Master of Etherium, with a few other creatures in there for good measure.
Matches 5-0
At this point I was obviously pumped and feeling great, since I’d gone from being uncertain about what to play the night before to undefeated in the first block of Constructed rounds and a lock for Day 2. Perhaps most important, however, was the fact that I hadn’t gone down in flames wearing the suit! It certainly would have been embarrassing to 0-4 while drawing that much attention to myself. Going undefeated, on the other hand — that’s style.
Moving on to Limited, I felt reasonably confident. I hadn’t done a huge number of drafts prior to the event, but I felt I had a reasonable grasp of the format. I preferred aggressive decks in two colors with at most a splash of a third color. Esper seemed like the best of the shards to me, and I wanted to force a base U/W beatdown Esper deck if possible, with my backup preferences being U/B/r aggressive Grixis or B/R/g Jund.
Thankfully, all of my drafts were covered, so I’ll just go over any really controversial picks (though I did most of those in the Top 8, I think!). In this draft everything just went perfectly. I opened Tower Gargoyle and never looked back. Some people on the FinkelDraft list questioned by pick of Akrasan Squire over Courier’s Capsule, which I maintain is correct, as well as my choice of Excommunicate over Obelisk of Esper. I think I like Excommunicate more than most, but in aggressive U/W I think it’s particularly good because good removal is hard to come by for that combo and the tempo gain from Excommunicate can be huge. As it turned out, my two Excommunicates and two Sedraxis Alchemists were the only removal I had, so I was very happy to have them.
My deck came together incredibly well, with late gifts because Sebastian Thaler was the only other player at the table playing Esper. I managed to misbuild it anyway, underrating the importance of my artifact density with Arsenal Thresher and Glassdusk Hulk and leaving a pair of decent artifact creatures in my sideboard in favor of Frontline Sage and Angelic Benediction. Interestingly, I think it was a carryover from this that lead me to make some of the drafting mistakes I did in the Top 8. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Round 6 — Cristophe Huber
This was covered on the sideboard, and I don’t really have anything to add that wasn’t said there. His deck didn’t seem great in either game we played, while I was able to get a ton of tempo out of both Excommunicate and Sedraxis Alchemist against his big green creatures.
Matches 6-0
Round 7 — Matt Hansen
This was a fake feature match, and I don’t remember a ton of the details. I do know that I was able to win a relatively tight game 1, and game 2 looked good when I was able to answer his turn two Goblin Deathraiders with a Sigiled Paladin. It started to look much worse, however, when he played Demonic Dread and flipped Goblin Outlander, so I went from having his offense dominated to taking three damage and facing down a pro-white creature. A Terminate and Dark Temper later and I was dead. Game 3 was anticlimactic, as he double mulliganed and didn’t really play anything. After game 2 I felt lucky to squeak a win out like that, but Brian David-Marshall told me that his deck wasn’t that great and he just happened to draw all the good stuff in one game. A huge part of doing well in any tournament is running good, though, and I certainly felt like I’d been luckier than my opponents in general so far.
Matches 7-0
Round 8 — Sebastian Thaler
Again, this was a feature match, and there’s not much to say that wasn’t said there. Game 1 I lost because I misbuilt my deck, plain and simple. We were in a race situation and I had Glassdusk Hulk but couldn’t draw enough artifacts to power it through his blockers because I drew Frontline Sage and Angelic Benediction where I should have had a pair of artifact creatures (foreshadowing again!). Game 2 Thaler kept a one land hand and never played a spell, in game 3 the higher power level in my three color deck overcame the consistency of his two color deck and I pulled it out.
Matches 8-0
At this point I was on top of the world. My first Pro Tour in four years and I had achieved a feat that I had never accomplished in all my time on the train — finish the first day undefeated. It was an amazing feeling, especially to do it in such style. Even so, when people congratulate me, I tell people that there’s still eight rounds to play and I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Going 8-0 by no means meant that I was a lock for Top 8. Many people have crashed and burned quite spectacularly from undefeated Day 1 records before, and I wasn’t about to get cocky. [Hi, Craig Jones! — Craig amused.]
I went out to dinner that night with Gabriel Nassif, David Williams, Noah Boeken, and Noah’s girlfriend Bibi. We went to a place called Sushi Sasabune, which hardly looks like anything if you walk by it on the street, but ended up being one of the most amazing meals of my life. Sushi Sasabune doesn’t have a menu. You do not order anything but drinks. You simply sit down and wait as the chef brings you delicious dish after delicious dish, giving exact instructions on how each is to be eaten. “No Soy Sauce. One bite please!”. All there is for you to do is tell him when to stop. The restaurant’s motto, emblazoned on the windows and a sign above the sushi bar, is “Trust me!” If you are ever in Hawaii, be sure to eat there. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life, made all the more so by the fact that David Williams lost the credit card game so it was free for me! Thanks, Dave!
For those of you who are not familiar with the credit card game, it’s one of the many ways us obsessive gamer types add excitement to the normally mundane business of paying the bill. It’s pretty much what you’d expect — at the end of the meal, everyone there puts in a credit card (girlfriends and other non-gamer guests are either excluded or represented by an additional card from their host), the cards are shuffled up, and one at a time each person chooses a card at random to be safe. The last credit card left pays. As if I needed another sign I was running good, I picked my card as safe on the first shot.
That wasn’t enough for us, though. We needed another game to play, so on the way back we created one: the radio game. The radio game is, again, very simple — bet on what the next song coming up on the radio is. The impetus for our creation of this game was the incredibly narrow playlist that the local Honolulu radio station seemed to have. On any given night they didn’t seem to have a rotation of more than a dozen or so songs, which made the radio game all that much more entertaining, because there was a pretty clear top tier of picks. The inaugural radio game had Noah Boeken taking “Birthday Sex” and “Kiss Me Through the Phone” versus Nassif with “Any Lady Gaga.” Lady Gaga took it down. We continued the radio game throughout the weekend, and came to the following rough draft order. The top contenders were clear, but after that things started to get muddy. Assuming a pack of 14 songs, what do you take?
1. Birthday Sex
2. Kiss Me Through the Phone
3. Poker Face
4. You Da Best
5. Sugar — Flo Rida
6. Knock You Down
7. Halo
8. Right Round
9. Boom Boom Pow
10. Just Dance
11. Blame It
12. Day N Nite
13. Dead and Gone
14. Heartless
After introducing the rest of the house to the radio game (and playing a few rounds, of course), I went to sleep — or at least tried. Staying in a house with a bunch of gamers, some of whom didn’t make Day 2 and were living up the rest of their time in Hawaii, and some of whom did but decided to party anyway — well, it can put a damper on your ability to get a good night’s sleep. I was a bit bleary eyed when I got up Saturday morning, but it was nothing that a Red Bull couldn’t fix. I grabbed the necessities, put on my dressed-down Day 2 getup of a Hawaiian shirt, white linen coat and shorts, and made for the site.
Again, my draft was covered, so if you’d like to read the details, check it out on magicthegathering.com (fun fact — I almost wrote “read about it on the Sideboard.” Man I feel old.) While I wanted to play Esper, the best cards for that archetype in my first pack were Call to Heel and Yoked Plowbeast, so I went with Branching Bolt. I decided to keep my options open by taking Fatestitcher in pack two, but a pick three Kresh the Bloodbraided followed by a pair of Jund Charms set me solidly in my backup plan of R/B/g. I opened Martial Coup in pack two and deliberated for a bit, but ultimately passed it in favor or Rupture Spire. I didn’t have any real mana fixing yet and already had some hefty Jund color commitments with my Kresh and double Charm, so I felt it was best to keep my deck from getting out of control. I ended up with a solid, but not spectacular deck with a bit less of an aggressive bent than I normally like. I could have taken some Putrid Leeches in Alara Reborn, but Putrid Leech often feels like a trap to me — he makes an otherwise consistent R/B/g deck’s mana bad. I didn’t have enough mana fixing to justify stretching to support too many early green plays, so I passed them up. It’s possible that my draft strategy is too conservative when it comes to my mana, but I’ve found mediocre mana bases to be the death of too many decks in this format. I felt like my deck was good for a 2-1, and with good draws could possible go 3-0.
Round 9 — Zac Hill
This match was featured, and quite simply I should have won. I got a good draw in the first game and was able to keep the pressure on long enough to get Zac into burn range. Game 2 both of us had decent draws and we traded a bit, but when it looked like Zac was running out of gas in the mid game, I overextended into a cycled Resounding Silence and lost two good creatures to it when he had no board. There are two absurd parts about this. The first is that I was passing to Zac in the draft, and I knew I passed a Resounding Silence and should have clearly known that he had it. The second is that the card I’d drawn for my turn was Singe-Mind Ogre, which I could have played pre-combat and had a chance to see my fate before walking into it.
Ultimately, I got ahead of myself. I saw the advantage I had on the board and I got too excited that I was going to win and be 9-0 and stopped analyzing the situation as well as I should have. I should have listened to the acronym “FOWDRN” written on Zac’s hand and focused on what I was doing right then rather than having my head in the clouds. As it stood, I blew it, got frustrated with myself, continued to play the game badly after that as a result, and then drew terribly in game 3 and lost.
8-1
It was a loss I absolutely deserved. I spent the time before the next round wandering around the site trying to regain my focus. Back in my early days on the Pro Tour, keeping focus was one of my weaknesses. I’d get so caught up in the idea of what winning a match meant that I wouldn’t pay full attention to the game at hand. I’d get frustrated when I’d get knocked out of Top 8 contention — if you look at my results, you’ll find virtually no Top 32 results in my entire Pro Tour career. I’d let my focus slip and it would all come crumbling down. I walked around the site blasting my iPod in my ears, resolving not to let that happen to me here.
Round 10 — Matt Hansen
This was a frustrating match, particularly coming off my first loss. In game 1, I was playing first and just played out lands the first two turns. On his second turn, Matt played an Esper Stormblade off of a Borderpost. My hand consisted of two Kathari Bomber, Wretched Banquet, and a few more expensive creatures. In order to maximize my mana, I play out a Kathari Bomber, which can block his Esper Stormblade if he attacks, and if he has a removal spell I can use Wretched Banquet to kill it the next turn and play the second Bomber. As it turns out, Matt has Sedraxis Alchemist, which bounces my Bomber and blanks my Banquet against his Stormblade. I’m forced to Wretched Banquet his Alchemist and replay my Bomber. He attacks with his Stormblade and I block, but he has the Unsummon to keep it around and adds another Stormblade to his assault. Eventually I’m just too far behind in tempo to his fliers that I die. Anything but that Alchemist…
Game 2 my draw seems very good against what I saw from his deck in game 1, with Jund Charm and Kresh, but this game he shows me a completely different side of his deck, playing nothing but three toughness flying creatures. I’m constantly behind once again and never catch up.
8-2
Going from 8-0 to 8-2 does not feel good, but I took a deep breath and reminded myself that if I’d come into the day at 6-2 or 7-1 that I’d be perfectly happy — even thrilled — to be 8-2 right now. I would not let myself become a victim of the narrative where everything falls apart after a perfect Day 1. One match at a time. Don’t look forward, and certainly don’t look back.
Round 11 — Taufik Indrakesuma
Taufik and I had a friendly match, with lots of chatter back and forth. He is also playing Jund, and he was two seats from my left and mentions that’s why he must not have seen any of the good removal. The first game is something of a blowout, as I kill two of his creatures with Jund Charm and ride the card and board advantage to victory. The second is a nailbiter. Taufik plays out an Ember Weaver on turn 3 with a red Borderpost. I play a Pestilent Kathari, and when Taufik plays out a Goblin Deathraider on his turn, I hold open my mana on my own with Jund Sojourners in hand, planning to trade with his Ember Weaver if he sends it in or Zap his Deathraider if he doesn’t. Before combat, Taufik plays an Algae Gharial, and I find myself in a very strange spot. I have both Sojourners and Jund Charm in hand, and ultimately end up letting the Gharial resolve and trading with the Ember Weaver when he attacks, pumping the Gharial up to 3/3. I cycle the Sojourners on his Deathraider the next turn and take some hits from Gharial, to which Taufik doesn’t have much of a follow up. I’m able to play and unearth several Kathari Bombers to get some damage in, but the Gharial is getting bigger and bigger.
Eventually I’m in must chump mode and I’m holding back tokens each turn while hoping to draw haste creatures to go with my Absorb Vis to burn him out. Eventually I get him down to three when I’m down to my last few chump blockers and facing down an infinite/infinite untargetable when Taufik plays Defiler of Souls. I happily sacrifice my last creature while he has to lose his Gharial. He attacks me and on my turn I Wretched Banquet his Defiler. He draws and has nothing, and I draw Singe-Mind Ogre and hit the Realm Razer in his hand for the win.
After the match I talk to Ben Lundquist, who had watched the second game, and we agreed that a far better plan in game 2 would have been just not to block on the turn he played Gharial and play out my Jund Sojourners the next turn. That would let me use Jund Charm the following turn to sweep both of our boards and deal the leaves-play damage from the Sojourner to kill the Ember Weaver. I would take a lot of damage and lose a lot of value from some of my cards, but Gharial was certainly the biggest threat in the game, and Jund Charm marked my best chances of getting rid of it. I had been too focused on maximizing the value of my cards that I didn’t think far enough ahead about how the game would play out. I won anyway, but I could have played much better.
Matches 9-2
I was relieved to finally get a win out of my deck, which I’d initially felt had a legitimate shot at running the table. Perhaps more importantly, I felt like I’d gotten my head back in the game after my punt against Zac Hill in the first round. I may not have played my last match perfectly, but my mistakes had come from thinking about the game in the wrong way rather than not thinking at all, which is something, at least. I was happy to get back to Constructed, where I had yet to lose a match all weekend, and from what I could tell the top of the swiss was filled with decks I wanted to play against.
Round 12 — Rasmus Sibast (G/W)
This, however, was not one of those decks. I knew Sibast was playing G/W, which was the one matchup I didn’t feel terribly comfortable with. I didn’t know his exact list, but Behemoth Sledge and Battlegrace Angel are both extremely hard cards for the Esper beatdown deck to deal with, and I had to assume he had both of them. On top of that, I expected at least some number of Qasali Pridemage along with Path and Oblivion Ring — all in all, not a great matchup.
The first game neither of us get out to great starts, with Big Oots (although, to be fair, Sibast is a much more moderate sized Oot these days) stalled on two land and a Hierarch for a few turns, while I don’t really have much in the way of an offense when he removes my fliers with Path and Oblivion Ring. I draw into a Thopter Foundry, however, and I’m able to use it along with a Tidehollow Sculler to send his Battlegrace Angel out of the game forever before he has enough mana to play it. I start churning out Thopters from every artifact I have, and pretty soon I have enough fliers to overwhelm him and win the game.
Game 2 is much closer. Sibast brings in what looks like his entire sideboard — then again, I bring in literally my entire sideboard, taking out junk like Vedalken Outlander, Canonist, Glaze Fiend, and Court Homunculus. Sibast keeps my offense in check with a plethora of removal and starts on the offense when he retrieves a Thornling that I’d removed with a Tidehollow Sculler. I peel a Path to Exile the very next turn and remove it when it attacks, and then manage to hide behind Zombie Outlander until I can piece together an offense with a pair of Esper Stormblades to win. I felt quite fortunate to come out of this one with a win, since it seemed Sibast’s deck was stocked with pretty much every card in the format that I didn’t want to see.
Matches 10-2
Round 13 — Conley Woods
I know Conley is playing a strange five color Ancient Ziggurat deck complete with Rhox War Monk, Wooly Thoctar, AND Sedraxis Specter, so I give him a bit of a ribbing about what his mana base must look like as we shuffle up. I actually think Conley’s deck was quite cool, and the card that seems by far the best in it is Naya Charm. With a deck comprised almost entirely of creatures, the Falter aspect of Naya Charm is huge, and given that it’s a late game card it doesn’t even need to be that easy to cast off of his Ziggurat-fueled mana base.
Game 1 was a close one. I got out to a strong start, but not strong enough to win before Conley played Broodmate Dragon. I had a Thopter Foundry and a Master of Etherium, but Conley played very well, never giving me a window when I could draw into an second Master to kill him by keeping back enough fliers whenever I had the ability to create enough fliers to alpha strike. I traded off an Esper Stormblade for one of his tokens and dropped very low in life when he played Jenura, Asura of War and forced a few chump blocks, but I drew back to back Glaze Fiends when I needed extra blockers, which both kept me alive and gave me enough artifacts that he couldn’t profitably attack with anything without me attacking back to kill him. A second Master of Etherium was waiting for me on top of my deck, and my swarm of 3/3 Thopters broke through his 15/15 Asura and Broodmate Dragon for the win, as he showed me the three straight land he’d drawn as I’d peeled action. After that game, game two was remarkably anticlimactic, as Conley kept a speculative hand and didn’t get there, while I had a pair of Master of Etherium and enough creatures to crunch him for 16 in a single turn when the second came down.
Matches 11-2
Round 14 — Cristophe Gregoir
Here I was, win and in, and I’m paired against my fifth Jund Control deck of the weekend, having gone undefeated against them so far. So of course I lost. Our games were quite close, with Cristophe dropping low in both of them before taking control with Cascade card advantage. My Canonists were nowhere to be seen in either game, and every key Cascade hit what it needed to, including a clutch Maelstrom Pulse to take out a pair of Glaze Fiends which would have come over for lethal the next turn in one game. I certainly can’t complain — I’d run good against Jund so far, and the matchup certainly isn’t nearly as good as my previous matchups would have you believe. I congratulated Cristophe and wished him good luck in the Top 8.
Matches 11-3
Round 15 — Tom Ross (Naya Planeswalker Aggro)
So here I was, win and in. Deja Vu. Tom was paired down against me, and he only needed a draw to make Top 8, so I asked him if he’d be willing to concede to me. He said he didn’t want to take the chance, and I told him that it was going to be a clean break and there really wasn’t a chance at all. He asked me if I’d be mad if he didn’t concede, and I told him of course not, and I’d let him think about it, and put on my headphones and started to shuffle up to play. Tom decided he’d rather play, so off we went.
Tom had all the goods in the first game, with Noble Hierarch to accelerate, two Path to Exile to keep my early beatdown under control, and Elspeth to seal the deal. I got roundly stomped. Game 2 was much closer, and I got some value out of Soul Manipulation and Sanctum Gargoyle to grind things out, eventually winning at 9 life. Before game 3, I jokingly mention to Tom that I’ll still accept his concession, and he declines, and then opens with a mulligan. I don’t even look at my hand and just watch him shuffle, and he picks up his set of six and stares at it for a bit, clearly unhappy before sending it back. In honor of Chris Pikula, I tell him “I’m not going to lie — I hope you go to four.” Tom chuckles and keeps his five cards, then leads with Exotic Orchard.
We’ve heard this story before. I’m in Top 8!
Matches 12-3
I’m not sure if I can express just how happy I was right then. I get up from the table and pretty much high five everyone within arm’s reach. I see Paul Rietzl doing a Magic show interview with Even Erwin and run over and grab Paul in the middle of it, shouting “I WON!” I get congratulations all around. I’d come up just short so many times in my years on the Pro Tour, and to come back after four years away and get there on the first try was just amazing.
Round 16 — Kazuya Mitamura
Kazuya had been waiting for several rounds to play someone who could draw with him, and I was not one to disappoint.
12-3-1
After the Top 8 is announced, Paul Rietzl and I head to the local mall to pick up new threads for the next day with Lan Ho and Eric Atwood from I Came To Game, along with some local friends of Mark Herberholz who had been partying with us at the house all week. I’d said that I would buy a new suit for Sunday, but I wasn’t able to find a suit that I really liked and didn’t feel like blowing a bunch of money just to have something new. I ended up just picking up a new jacket to wear with my superman shirt and jeans for a sharp-yet-casual LA look — though from the difference in my results on Day 1 and the other days, maybe clothes really do make the man…
We head back to the beach house where there is a raging party going on, and seeing as the Top 8 actually doesn’t start until the civilized hour of 11am, I decide I’m entitled to a bit of celebration. I have a few drinks and then get convinced to do a draft, in which I am absolutely mauled by Jamie Parke and his Esper control deck featuring two Etherwrought Pages, although I’m sure my level of sobriety didn’t help matters. I witness an epic dance-off between Patrick Chapin and Gabriel Nassif, along with a remarkable display of beer pong prowess also on Nassif’s part that tragically fell prey to feminine wiles. If you ever get a chance to party with He of the Yellow Hat, I highly recommend it — it’s a recipe for hilarity.
I finally end up crashing later than I’d intended, and unfortunately my body hasn’t quite adjusted to the time change and I can’t really manage to sleep in and take advantage of the late start time. Paul Rietzl and I are up much before the rest of the house, and Herberholz is none too pleased when he’s woken up to lend us his keys to get to the event site. We make our way there and load up at the 7-11 across the street before heading over to the tournament site.
As something of an aside — while this is the first time I’ve mentioned it, we made a point of hitting up that 7-11 every morning and picking up snacks for the day. Every morning I had a banana an energy bar, and made sure I had more for the rest of the day. I mentioned the importance of keeping fed and hydrated in my Seven Habits article, and I practice what I preach. Throughout the entire event I made sure I never went hungry, even if it meant the other players at my draft pod on Day 2 laughing as I ate a banana at the table.
Before the draft, they gave us all leis made of fresh flowers, and I made someone on staff pick one out for me to match my outfit since I’m color blind — I’d actually had my entire outfit color coordinated and approved the night before, and I couldn’t have it ruined now. They seat us at the draft table, and I’m between Mitamura and Rietzl, with Conley Woods my first round opponent across the table.
If you’re interested in watching the entire draft, it’s available online, both in the draft viewer and in video with commentary — the latter of which I have not watched. I opened Oblivion Ring and Mycoloth, and with both a strong preference toward Esper and an understanding with Rietzl that I’d be drafting such, I took the Ring and passed him the rare monster. The rest of the first pack was fairly uncontroversial, though it was clear to me that someone upstream was also drafting U/W and I wouldn’t get the sort of ridiculous deck I had in my first draft pod.
In the second pack my first big controversial decision was Faerie Mechanist vs. Gleam of Resistance. I took the Gleam both because it wasn’t clear to me how much artifact density I’d have and because I really wanted to solidify my colored mana early on, but in retrospect I think I should have taken the Mechanist because it gives me a better chance for the kind of powerful deck I need to win the pro tour. Then came Esperzoa vs. Esper Cormorants, in which case I took the Esperzoa because I actually was thinking about potential future upside rather than what my deck looked like right now — but I sure would have liked to have had that Faerie Mechanist to go with it.
I continued drafting somewhat erratically between U/W and a real Esper artifact deck, and I was much too cautious about my mana, taking a Borderpost first pick of Alara Reborn over a Crystallization in part to help my mana and in part to up my artifact count. I got passed two Wall of Denial, which are amazing but don’t really help the artifact theme, and then took a pair of Arsenel Threshers over a Talon Trooper and an Etherium Abomination, both of which would have been more consistently powerful in my deck based on its makeup at that point. My biggest mistake, however, was passing a late Lich Lord of Unx in favor of a Yoked Plowbeast. My deck was a slow-ish controlling deck with two walls and a Scepter of Dominance that needed win conditions, and Lich Lord was perfect, but I was overly concerned about my artifact count as a result of some of my earlier mispicks. I talked to Gabriel Nassif after the draft, and he said it seemed like I was drafting scared, and I think he was right. I wasn’t giving myself enough opportunity to let my deck develop in the draft, and kept trying to patch up holes rather than give myself more strength.
Quarterfinals — Conley Woods
The first and third games of this match were on camera, but I think the second game was the most interesting. In the first I double mulliganed and lost a Borderpost to Volcanic Submersion when I actually had a very good hand, and then failed to draw another blue source until Conley had established a pretty big offense. Incidentally, I probably misplayed in that game — although it would have weakened my Arsenel Thresher, I should have played out Wall of Denial and Executioner’s Capsule on the turn that I broke my Kaleidestone to play the 5/5 Thresher. I needed to stop a 4/4 and a 6/4, and Conley has a bunch of cards in hand so he almost certainly has removal. He can’t remove the Wall, and with only one black mana I can’t play and use the Capsule the following turn, so the Wall plus Capsule would have given me a better chance of stabilizing. As it happens, he had Lavalanche anyway so whatever I did was pretty meaningless, but I still could have played better.
The second game highlighted why I needed a card like Lich Lord of Unx in my deck. Conley uses his Caldera Hellion (nice bombs!) early on to clear my board, and I end up hiding behind walls without much offense for a while. I’m using Frontline Sage to filter excess lands and eventually drew some removal that let me start attacking, and I was able to get Conley down very low despite his swath of removal, but end up having to use my Traumatic Visions to counter a Grixis Charm on my Oblivion Ring or else I won’t have enough time to kill him before I get decked, and he draws a Pale Recluse to stop my offense the turn before he dies. A few turns later he draws Lavalanche, and without a counter I lose. My kingdom for a win condition.
Game 3 was on camera, and I won, and game 4 looked pretty good when I get down a quick Bant Sureblade and take his Lavalanche with the Brainbite I sideboarded in. It looks much worse, though, when he kills my Bant Sureblade and that’s the last spell I draw for the rest of the game, as my deck serves up nothing but land.
Overall I felt like I got pretty unlucky in my Top 8 match, between the double mulligan and the mana flood in two games, but I didn’t put myself in the best position to win the draft from the start. I probably would have won game 2 if I’d had better win conditions in my deck, but who can say for sure. Conley’s deck was quite good, and he played very well, and I certainly can’t say I deserved it any more than he did.
Any time your tournament ends on a loss it’s disappointing, but I certainly can’t say I’m anything but thrilled with my finish in Honolulu. The second Top 8 means a lot to me, especially since I think it will have a huge impact on the number of votes I get for the Hall of Fame. I think I would have had a great chance to make it in if I’d won, but even just another top finish puts me on the radar, at least, and that’s huge. I was kicking myself for quitting when I first heard about it, because I knew I didn’t have a great chance of getting voted, and now at least maybe I have a chance.
That night the whole beach house crew went out to Nobu, which is yet another of my favorite restaurants. Noah Boeken is a Nobu regular in Las Vegas, and he took the liberty of ordering for our entire table, until the waitress told him he was ordering too much and she wasn’t going to accept anything else until we finished it all. We barely end up making it through what Noah did order, and rather than put people at risk of ruin from the credit card game or spend all of my winning immediately, we split the bill evenly — and yet somehow it all ends up on my credit card anyway! My mint.com financial tracking software had a fit when that charge showed up, I assure you.
Our last night in the beach house brought more gamers, more celebrations and many, many more radio games. On Monday we all made it out to the beach on the North Shore, conquered the maze at the Dole Plantation, visited the local bars in Waikiki (after Jelger misread his noon ticket for midnight), and generally had a blast just hanging out and not playing Magic. On Tuesday I took a very long, very sunburned flight to Boston for my 10 year high school reunion the following weekend.
Guess who had the best story about what he’s doing with his life?
Until next time…
bmk