A Novice’s Guide to The World Championships – *3rd*

Hi, I’m Nick!

Most of you will not have heard my name before Worlds. I started playing back in the days of Mirage, when a neighbour used to play casually and was selling off some of his friend’s cards since he had stopped playing. Seeing as I was unaware of any competitive Magic at the time I just bought the odd card from him and purchased random boosters to improve my one and only deck. I continued in this ilk until Exodus expansion, which is perhaps my all time favorite, and contains my favorite card — Mindless Automaton. However, my interest in the game began to wane as Masques block came in, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I would pick up Magic cards in anger again.

When attending university in London I chanced upon an active group of players at the Games Club, and attended my first sanctioned event at the Darksteel prerelease run there. I decided that I enjoyed the challenge of playing again, only this time on a more even power level. (When we used to play it was not uncommon for my friend to power out a turn 2 Argothian Wurm using his what seemed, at the time, to be utterly broken combo of turn 1 land Sol Ring, turn 2 land Wurm!) Because I had not played for such a long time I had almost no cards that were legal for Constructed, and this, along with my poor man’s budget and the prevalence for booster draft at the club, pushed me almost solely into Limited play.

Since then I have played on average about 1-2 drafts a week and accumulated a decent Limited rating (usually ranging from about 1850-1900). I have also occasionally dabbled in Constructed play, mostly for larger tournaments, because I find that when I have played I have needed to borrow a lot of cards. My Constructed play has been varied, as I find myself shunning net decks, instead taking a general theme that I have seen and tweaking it to make it more acceptable to my designs.

That summer was also the first time that I qualified for my National Championships. However, with the rotation of many cards both played and played against, I had to come up with a new deck to play. Sadly for me my deck sucked, and the only way I managed to make Top 8 was on the back of my 6-0 draft performance — and even once there, I went out in the quarter finals without too much effort.

This year (2006) I thought things were probably headed along a similar path, as a week before Nationals (pre-Coldsnap Standard) I still hadn’t settled on a deck to play. I was leaning towards playing Izzetron, but wasn’t entirely sure. I had a friend who had not yet qualified to play at the Nationals, and offered to try to teach him how to play Tron in the environment. While we were testing against different decks, I decided to try to test it against an aggro-control hybrid deck, and sleeved up a rough snakes deck. About twenty games later, having lost very few, I decided to give the deck a whirl in a sanctioned environment at the FNM that week. I built up a makeshift sideboard and took it along. I was again very impressed by the showing, as I managed to post a 4-0. Hunting desperately, I managed to dig up some Coat Of Arms from a friend (they seemed almost impossible to get from the usual people in Cardiff), and added those to the deck. At the LCQ for Nationals they ran a testing tourney alongside, for those of us already qualified. I competed and found the deck to be very strong, again going undefeated.

At Nationals I managed to post a reasonable score again, despite playing several members of our previous National teams throughout the weekend, and I found myself in the Top 8. The snakes held out for me there, beating Shane in the quarters (who turned out to be the alternate for the team due to rescinding), and Jimmy (who won the 3/4th playoff) in the semi, before losing to our team captain — the ever top-decking Roy Williams – in the final.

This was the beginning of our great Paris adventure…

…

Testing for Worlds began with Roy (team captain) and I keeping in touch over MSN, and trying various decks against each other on MWS. I spent far too much time trying to make a R/B madness deck running Mindless Automaton — see my obsession with the Automaton. We started off leaning towards a Zoo deck and played a lot with it — Roy, in fact, won his Champs tournament with the deck. It focused more on one- and two- drops than many other builds, but we decided ultimately that it wasn’t the deck to play. By this time, Time Spiral was released on MTGO, and we both took some time out to play quite a lot in the Sealed and Draft queues, both making the Top 8 of premier events and winning quite a few 8-4 and 4-3 queues. This financed getting the cards together that we would need to test properly online. I find MWS is fine for testing if you’re playing against someone you know, but as soon as you advertise for serious Standard testing you get every man with their Bayou Dragonflies and Azusa, Lost but Seeking decks jumping in!

Once the prices of cards and boosters of Time Spiral on MTGO had settled down, we bought some extra tickets and bought up the rest of the cards we thought we would need. One of the first decks we tried was the Green/Blue Spectral Force deck, though we were both very underwhelmed by the way the deck was playing. I tried to make a B/W/R Firemane Arena deck work too, with little success, but at this point we started to notice more people playing with (and succeeding with) the general Boros archetype. Its game plan was very similar to the game plan of the Zoo decks that we had been trying, but it seemed to be superior in that its consistency level was higher. It offered a marginally lower power level in its creatures, and exactly the same burn suite. This means that the deck didn’t have to be mulliganed so frequently, and even when it did mulligan, the hands were generally stronger due to the much more stable manabase.

Here is the list I took to Worlds:

After the Zoo testing, we knew we wanted the deck to be very heavy at the one- and two-drop slot. We quickly set about optimising the creature base, settling on a combination of Savannah Lions, Icatian Javelineers, and Magus of the Scroll, each having strengths and weaknesses against different decks. The Lions were strongest against control as they beat down the hardest, while the Javelineers proved to be superb against many Green decks out there. They were able to shoot down many a turn 1 Bird / Elf, and they also proved to be fantastic in the mirror — they were the only card able to kill Soltari Priest, except for another Priest. Magus seemed to excel only against Green Weenie decks, where the ability to repeatedly shoot down tokens or small guys was sometimes game-winning but often frustratingly out of reach, due to being unable to completely empty your hand quick enough. Looking back, if I had known precisely what decks were going to turn out at Worlds I think that the Magus would have most certainly have become a Scorched Rusalka — I might even have fitted a second one into the list somewhere, as Faith’s Fetters was something that plagued me all week. The ability to fizzle one would have made the difference in some very close games. During testing, however, I didn’t play against any Blue/White Urzatron models, despite building a deck that actually looks very similar to the deck that the Japanese players came up with (I just couldn’t get it to work). Instead we were expecting Urzatron to be present in the U/R flavor.

The two-drops were a no-brainer; the Priests and the Knights basically auto-included themselves as the standout two-drops in the format, both because of their ability to get past most early blockers, either with shadow or flanking (which was relevant because of Court Hussar). The extra Unicorn slipped in because I wanted an extra two-drop, and their inclusion allows me to free up an extra sideboard space too.

I skipped the entire three-drop slot, figuring that the only creatures really worth this berth were Paladin En-Vec and Skyknight Legionnaire. Neither of which proved to be that great, as they usually end up being Wrathed away the next turn or two before they could deal reasonable damage. Instead I moved straight up to the four-drop slot, and what seems to be the most controversial inclusion… a 2/4 for four mana! It doesn’t sound that great in a deck that’s designed to deal large quantities of damage quickly, but once suggested by Roy I tried it out. It seemed really good in a lot of matchups. It is the perfect follow-up to a turn 4 Wrath, as most decks packing Wrath are predominantly White. It can skip past Condemn, Mortify, Faith’s Fetters, a resurrected Angel of Despair/Wrath, an elephant of the 4/4 variety, Lightning Angel, Ghost Council… the list goes on. Not only is it great against these control decks, but it also has some interesting interactions with other aggro decks. It forces other red aggro players to leave Chars in the main deck or face having to two-for-one it with multiple burn / creatures. In general, playing versus aggro with this deck you get to take out your Chars and can save yourself some self-inflicted damage by bringing in Honorable Passage, but they have to leave their Chars in and save them for the Emissaries. It’s also good against decks that pack a lot of 3/3 guys (see Call of the Herd / Watchwolf), as they are forced to stop attacking into it and are looking to double-block it — just asking for you to point a burn spell at one of the potential blockers. Another minor point is that it does sidestep Glare of Subdual, forcing them to draw and make more than one token / guy / chump-blocker a turn to stay ahead.

I don’t think I need to discuss the burn suit too much, though I omitted Demonfire because I preferred to have the extra creature in the maindeck. Demonfire is best to burn out counter-control, something that the deck has a pretty good setup to defeat anyway because of the number of aggressive one- and two-drops.

The sideboarding was reasonably straightforward. I was expecting a few enchantments like Circle of Protection: Red and Worship, which some aggro decks board in with Giant Solifuge to annoy, so eventually decided upon a third Unicorn. I did toy with the idea of Cloudchaser Kestrel for quite some time, but in the end settled on something that I could somewhat afford to drop before seeing the enchantment that I wanted gone. The LD sideboard strategy was for against Dragonstorm, and other control matchups like Solar Flare / Pox and Urzatron, where snagging a few lands early on can make a huge dent in their development (or ability to cast a silly nine-mana sorcery). The Passages seemed like a really useful inclusion: very good against spells like Wildfire, and good to cause the last few points of damage against storming dragons! They’re also strong in the mirror match, where turning a burn spell back on its owner while saving a guy / yourself can be a huge swing in tempo.

The other cards of note were the Pacifisms, which are strong against resolved turn 4 8/8 trampling blockers, and very good in the aggro mirror match, where taking out a random blocker can mean a huge swing in life totals. It’s also one of the few cards that can stop an opposing Soltari Priest.

Due to hours of playtesting, the other two local team members and myself were very late in obtaining transport and accommodation. Despite that we still managed to get some incredibly cheap accommodation that wasn’t excessively far from the venue, and a reasonably priced coach fare (if you could stomach the fifteen hours sat on a coach).

Our journey to Paris passed with very little incident. We spent most of our time collating and sleeving the decks from the dozens of cards we had borrowed from various different people back home, as at least one of us barely owned any current cards. With a brief interlude on the short ferry trip across the channel for a spot of Extended playtesting – though with only two decks sleeved up, and us still requiring cards for a third deck, it was a little repetitive… but we did see just how explosive the goblin deck piloted by the captain was going to be. With no experience of playing goblins I decided to pass up the chance to try the deck out at an event like Worlds.

Arriving very tired in Paris at 6:30am on the Tuesday, we made our way across the city through the early morning commuter traffic. After wrestling with a ticket machine for near 30 minutes trying to extract some tickets, we spent a couple of hours killing time in the hotel lobby waiting to be allowed into our room. Finally, after some well-earned sleep, we took a trip into the centre of Paris to attempt to find the venue. After much wandering we eventually found the right area, and after taking some pictures of the Louvre buildings in their evening illuminations we descended down into the Carousel to the player registration area. We arrived about five minutes before the whole area turned into a massive scrum as the desk opened. We fought our way through and claimed our free goodies, and spent a few moments gawping at the four-meter high Serra Angel standing in our path. However, noticing the free food and drink counters dotted around the place, and taking into account the massive scrum behind us, we decided to waste no time… and grabbed a table and some free food! We were joined later that evening by Richard Hagon, who was completing his early shows for Mox Radio. He asked us for a group interview about the team and about our chances as we perceived them, we were quite perplexed as he scoffed when we suggested that we thought we could finish at least higher than the English team. We felt quite aggrieved when he claimed that almost everyone in the competition was much better than us.

Getting back to the hotel late that evening we decided to do some more last-minute practice, and played some games against each other’s almost identical Standard decks! I got fed up after losing for the umpteenth time to Shane, so I retired to bed for some more much-needed sleep.

We discovered we had to be up before 8am to reach the venue on time – not something I wanted to hear considering I hadn’t woken up before midday in months. Even worse, we discovered that we had to be up an hour earlier for play on the remaining days! But we were all eager to get the competition started well, so we attacked the morning with great vigor, wolfing down breakfast and braving the cold early morning streets of Paris. Arriving a few minutes early, we set up shop next to some of the English players and sat down to write up decklists for the day and watch the flag ceremony.

On to round 1!

Round 1
Going into the tournament I was wondering how I would manage with the language barrier, as the only language I even speak a spattering of is French. So it was with great relief that I found that I was paired against the Northern Irish champion Gareth Middleton, with the whole of our team seated in a row on tables one, two, and three. We joked about enjoying our time at the top. After a quick exchange of pleasantries I found that he was playing Dark Boros, a deck I had seen in the past but not for a while.

I took the first game on the back of Soltari Priests, and causing less pain to myself with my manabase. Wildfire Emissary and his outstanding four-ass dragged two burn spells into the graveyard with him. The second game was not so good however, and despite dropping a Paladin En-Vec I managed to hit a land flood, while Dark Confidant refilled his hand with enough gas to kill me. The third game saw Gareth a little mana-shy, and again Paladin En-Vec and his Soltari friend came out to play to clean up.

A great start to Worlds… 1-0!

Round 2
I sat down, and eventually managed to get my opponent’s name correct: Juan Carlos Jaillita Zeballos. He was another National Team member, this time from Bolivia. Juan Carlos was playing some type of Blue/Red Counter-Burn deck, with Remand, Volcanic Hammer, Rift Bolt, Psionic Blasts, Browbeat, and a Black splash for something that I never saw. This match hinged on game 1, as games 2 and 3 were washouts due to mana screw and being forced to mulligan severely.

Game 1 I came out fast with guys, but Juan Carlos made an error of judgment, believing that he could burn me out before I could kill him with combined creature and direct damage. Because of this he pointed Rift Bolts at me instead of my guys, and realised too late to alter his plans enough.

I moved to 2-0, joining the team reserve. We sat down chatting away to each other about our matches, saying how it would be funny if we met in the next round!

Round 3
We check the boards, we check them again, then check them for a third time… yes, this round I was paired against Shane Condon, the team reserve. The guy who I couldn’t beat in testing with almost identical decks… oh joy!

The good news is everyone tells me that, as he is the reserve, he will (of course) scoop to me. I wander over to the table, and see Shane there grinning. He apparently has let the 2-0 position that he is now in go to his head, and he really wants to play! (To be fair to him, I don’t blame him one bit – 3-0 at Worlds is quite a nice place to be.) So, armed with the knowledge that I must win this one the hard way, I set about drawing land, and then some more land, and some more lands to go with that. I get him to seven (somehow), but then his spells take over and I concede with him at seven and myself with thirteen. The problem for me was its impossible to deal seven points of damage to him when he has the board cleared and is doing considerable damage to me with a lot of guys.

Game 2, and its his turn to have mana issues, this time a lack of it. This means he has a lot of cards in hand and lots of options. again I draw probably more land than I should do, and am facing down the barrel of a gun. He sends in a Soltari Priest to knock me to four, and uses his newly found fourth land to point a Volcanic Hammer at me to put me at one, and then another one to take the match 2-0.

I was expecting him to scoop to me at this point, with the Hammer on the stack… but he decided he wanted to play hardball…

So I levelled an Honorable Passage at myself, and sent three back at him before swinging back to take the game!

On to game 3… we both try to make a good game of it. Shane starts with Lions, and I start with Icatian Javelineers. Shane follows up with a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, but all he time taking damage from his painlands. I follow up with a Pacifism for the Knight, and down a Lions with the Javelineer counter. Helix for Shane buys him some time and recuperates him some life by killing my recently cast Ronom Unicorn. So at this point I’m forced to keep beating down with the Javelineers, which were joined shortly by a second and then a third. The damage was slow but steady. I soon had him down to seven, though when he cast a Unicorn and another Savannah Lions, he also had to use a Pacifism to halt an extra Javelineer as his life was dropping to a critical level. I Helixed the Unicorn, allowing him to take out the Pacifism on his Knight, but I had a fresh one to put back on it. Shooting the Lions with one of my Javelineers, I was able to swing for another one with my non-Pacified Javelineers, taking him to six. I dropped another Unicorn, and was able to put him to two. I followed up with a Hammer to his head, not fearing Passage too badly because of my healthy life total of fourteen.

A 2-1 victory again! I’m somehow 3-0.

Round 4
This was the fastest round of the day for me. I played against a very nice guy called Ernesto Delgado, who informed me that he was the entire Uruguayan team. It was soon apparent that he was playing Izzetron. On the play, my opening hand was far, far too fast for him to handle. I believe he took two damage from a shock land, but his life total went like this:

20
18
16
10
9
3
0

Ending on turn 5 with a Rift Bolt hard-cast. This was after a Repeal on my Lions, and a turn 4 Tron-assisted Confiscate on my Knight of the Holy Nimbus. Game 2 he brought in Pyroclasm, and landed one taking out two of my guys. However, he stumbled on land and I was able to take the game and match away from him very quickly by Stone Raining his only colored mana supply, which also happened to be only his second land. I was able to follow this up with two more guys and take the game shortly after, leaving me at 4-0 for the tournament!

4-0

Round 5
Coming into round 5 there were an odd number of 4-0 decks, so I was paired down against a 3-0-1. A Ukrainian called Oleksandr Gerasymenko. Oleksandr was playing a Blue/White control deck, and was visibly frustrated at the way his deck misbehaved this round, although mine wasn’t exactly covering itself in glory. It took two long games (long, at least, by Boros Deck Wins standards) to finally defeat my land- and color-screwed opponent. I believe I took both games with instant burn in response to him feeling forced to cast or flashback a draw spell of some variety.

5-0

Round 6
By this point I was beginning to get giddy. I had started the day on table 2, and by managing to remain undefeated so far, I had climbed all the way up to table 3! This was, however, where I expected it to go all wrong…

Throughout the day I had seen a guy playing at the end of the round, trying desperately to mill the last few cards from an opponents library, or trying to stay alive to preserve his 1-0 lead. This gentleman was an American called John Sittner, who (to my disgust) was playing a mono-White Howling Mine Martyr deck whose primary win condition was by decking, using Jester’s Scepter to speed it up. Knowing that this matchup was heavily weighted against me, I walked over to the table to find John sitting there setting up his bovine army…?!

Apparently, John decided it was a good idea to have a set of cows lined up alongside him, glaring at his opponents in an attempt to put them off. Apparently this works, as I found out later!

I found an acceptable hand and wished him luck… but not too much. I was already heavy underdog here. I started putting pressure on him with creatures, and John found some Howling Mines to keep both of our hands full. I found burn, John found lands. Several turns later and the life scores had changed like this:

20
18

That was mine (I took two from a shock land). John’s went like this…

20
18
15
11
7
4
0

Hmm, not as I’d expected.

I was sure the deck was supposed to gain some silly amount of life, and then Wrath. Hell, even the other way round would work!

On to game 2, and the cows had their revenge as I decided, against my better judgement, to Cryoclasm the one untapped Plains after attacking with my Knight of the Holy Nimbus. I realised just after I entered my declare attacker step what a stupid plan this was, and I was rightly punished with a Condemn for my sins! However, John’s plan of decking seemed to be coming online with his Scepter down, but something was still missing from his side. Despite two Howling Mines, there was no sign of a Martyr or a Wrath, and all I seemed to be able to draw was Rift Bolts. Again, after several turns of attacking, all that was required for me was to point one of the many burn spells in hand at his head to receive a very disappointed “congratulations” from my opponent. Though the cows had cost me slightly, it thankfully hadn’t been game altering.

6-0

Finishing the day at 6-0 was an amazing feeling. I felt I had put in a lot of effort in preparing for the Standard portion of the tournament, and this result was, I feel, a reflection on that time and effort. I think that one of the most important things about playing in a Magic tournament is not necessarily selecting the best deck, though of course this does help. No, I think one of the most overlooked aspects to preparation is to make sure you know your deck, and how it plays against different types of decks. Of course, to achieve this it helps to know the other decks that you may well play against, and the strategies that they will be employing to defeat you — playing with these decks, as well as your own, will help you to achieve this.

If someone had offered me 4-2 in the Standard portion at the beginning of the day, I probably would have taken them up! However, being at 6-0 not only puts high expectations on yourself, but also others expect you to keep going. All I can say is that I tried not to let my position go to my head, and I tried to focus on playing my Magic matches one at a time. I wasn’t looking too far ahead. I maintained a healthy respect for the abilities of my opponents, while not getting overawed when playing big names.

At the end of the day, after receiving congratulations from all the Welsh and English players, we decided to go out for a meal. We wandered around for a while, discovering that – against all odds – Shane can somehow get lost walking in a straight line – until we found a nice-enough looking pizza restaurant. Jimmy and Ray Fong decided to have a plate of l’escargots between them. While we joked about how they would end up ill the next day, it was to be Roy and myself, the guys who stuck to pizza, that would end up falling foul of the restaurant’s cuisine!

Day 2

Day 2 started very early. In fact, it was more like a continuance of day 1! Roy and myself ordered the same pizza at the restaurant the night before, and both of us barely slept that night. Luckily for me it was Roy who got the worst of things, and he was still very ill the next morning. Pausing several times on the way to the venue for Roy to be violently sick, we arrive later than anticipated and went straight to the judging staff to ask them about contingency plans for any continued illness. Jaap Brouwer, head judge for the event, explained to us that should either of us have to exit during the drafts then we would be able to rejoin if we were back at our table before the next pack, and in the meantime would get random picks – hello MTGO goofgrabs! — but if we weren’t back by the next pack, we would be dropped. He then asked what points we were on, I told him my points total, and with a wry smile he commented that getting dropped wouldn’t be very good for my tournament prospects!

So, nursing my still delicate stomach, I sat down with Itaru Ishida to my right, Gabriel Nassif to his right, Tsuyoshi Fujita to my left, and Willy Edel to his left.

A nice easy draft to get my day started…

Coming in to the tournament, I knew from my numerous drafts that if there is anything I really don’t want to draft, it’s Green. Unless you open some very strong cards, I find it very underpowered for the most part. Out of preference, I like to draft a combination of Blue/Black/Red, with most of my wins coming with Blue/Black decks (although more recently I’m finding a lot of favor with White Weenie splashing a second color for support). Sitting at this table, I had a strong feeling that many of the people around me would end up also trying to draft Blue, so my strategy was to take the strongest cards in the packs for the first couple of picks before trying to read the frequently convoluted signals later down the line. As it transpired, I opened a pretty mediocre pack. The only real card of note was a Riftwing Cloudskate. I took this card, and was pleasantly surprised to be passed some other decent Blue cards, along with some passable Black creatures and removal. Of course, I opened those strong Green cards in packs 2 and 3, when there was no way I could play them with what I already had – Stormbind in pack 2, and Call of the Herd in pack 3.

When the dust settled, I had what I considered to be quite a strong deck. It had a good aggressive suite of cards, with good fliers and strong removal, and it featured the Riftwing / Momentary Blink combo.

Round 7
This was against Itaru Ishida, who was sat immediately to my right during the draft. He had built a Green/Blue deck that splashed Red for Stormbind. I’m glad that some people get to enjoy my bomb “rare” openings! Our first game was dominated by his Looter il-Kor, which provided him with excellent card filtering and some minor damage, until he was able to take two strong turns involving a Wipe Away on my Castle Raptors (in response to a Momentary Blink that I was trying to use to provide a surprise blocker). Game 2 involved him filtering land after land out of his deck using a Greenseeker, while I slowly plugged away at his life total with flyers. He never found anything to stem the bleeding, and eventually scooped them up after a glance at the round timer. Game 3 was a tough game. He kept playing (and I kept bouncing) a Sporesower Thallid, which repeatedly refused to block my Skulking Knight. I was able to take the game and the match using some timely bounce effects, in the face of a resolved Stormbind.

7-0

Round 8
Surely this run of success couldn’t keep going all the way through the tournament… could it?

In round 8, I was paired against one of the two other people on 21 points: Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa. For the first time ever I had been selected to play in a feature match. I was extremely nervous at having a room full of people able to see my choices and options precisely. I sat down and shuffled up. The first game went away from me, as after a decent enough opening hand I found that, under the gaze of all the spectators, all I could draw was land and more land.

In the second game – on the play – I mulliganed a one-land hand into a five-land hand. Knowing I needed more gas to win the game, I reluctantly put that hand back and found a five-card had with two lands and some spells. I accepted it gratefully, and proceeded to draw land and more land and more land. In fact, by the turn I died, I think that – despite reducing him to two life – I had actually only drawn two spells during the entire game. Sometimes decks just misbehave, and this happens as much in paper Magic as it does online, but for some reason it always feels worse online.

I don’t believe that there was anything I could do about this match. I think my deck was better, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t make any play errors, but sometimes a random pile of forty cards can have some pretty unlikely and unfortunate sequences in it. I just so happened to hit these once in each game.

One thing that can be avoided, however, is warnings for incorrect procedure! In this match I was cautioned for doing something extremely silly. When I play, I normally place my library on my left side of me, but sitting at the feature match tables I had felt compelled to place it on the markings on the table on my right. Paulo had put his deck where he wanted, which happened to be on his right (my left), so during one turn while I was busy cursing my lack of drawing anything other than spells, I reached over to “my” library, went to pull the top card off, and suddenly Paulo reached across and grabbed the top card to stop me. In my autopilot mode, I had started to draw a card from my opponent’s library, despite it being in a sleeve of a completely different color! Luckily, thanks to his quick reactions (thanks Paulo), I didn’t draw it, and didn’t get a warning for the offence – just a caution. I just looked very silly in front of a room full of people who would never make an error like that! The lesson from this: make sure you’re comfortable with the environment you’re playing in!

7-1

Round 9
Playing against Shouhei Yamamoto from the Japanese team, he too was playing with Green guys like Itaru. However, unlike Itaru’s two Scryb Ranger, Shouhei’s guys caused me a headache.

In game 1 we both hit fairly heavy land draws, with Shouhei’s being slightly more relevant because he had Urza’s Factory out and a Scryb Ranger to stop my Blue fliers from getting in for damage. In game 2 we both had to mulligan heavily, and as a result both got stuck on lands. Eventually I drew some lands and recovered before Shouhei’s earlier-discarded Thrill of the Hunts came into use. Game 3 was again governed by his fat creatures on the ground, backed up by Thrills, and the damn Ranger stopping my Blue fliers from punching through. I died before I could find one of my four or five answers to it.

7-2

I was really hoping to come out of the pod with a 2-1 record or better, as I was sure my deck was one of the strongest decks and I don’t think I made any glaringly bad plays. Slightly disappointed, I sat down to the second draft. Again at the table were Shouhei Yamamoto, Itaru Ishida, and Willy Edel. Joining us were Chris McDaniel, Guillaume Wafo-Tapa, Masami Ibamoto, and Xuan-Ji Wang. So, another nice easy draft to relax to!

This was not one of my favorite drafts. Right from the start, the guy drafting to my right (you know who you were) was laying the cards out between packs in such a way that I was struggling to pick them up easily, and I spent half my pick time flailing about in this fashion. I should have called a judge, and probably my lack of timed drafting practice with real cards (I have probably only done about ten or so) made me think that this was my fault, that I couldn’t pick them up, and it wasn’t someone trying to mess me around. For those of you who do not wish to inconvenience your neighbours, it’s really easy to overlap the edges of the cards slightly when laying them out in rows so that they pick up easily. [Sound advice… this one always annoys me too — Craig.]

Anyway, the other reason I didn’t enjoy this draft is that I felt I was forced into Green. I ended up first-picking a Thelonite Hermit, and later picking up several Green fatties, and some accelerators (in the form of Gemhide Sliver, double Yavimaya Dryad, and a Totem). To go with these I also had a Gauntlets of Power, deducing that no one else would be running much Green. The deck was essentially mono-Green, with a couple of small splashes easily supported by a Search for Tomorrow, the Gemhide, and a Greenseeker.

Round 10
I was paired against Willy Edel who was coming off the back of a finals performance at the last Pro Tour running this format… *gulp!*

Game 1 saw Willy screwed early on, and he couldn’t find enough Tendrils of Despair to bring him back from the teetering life total he had fallen to. Game 2, and the silly combo of Gauntlets of Power powered out turn 4 by a Weatherseed Totem was enough to seal the match, as tapping 2.5 lands to make a 6/4 trampling (and effectively indestructible) creature every turn causes a whole lot of pain!

8-2

Round 11
This was a great match against a really friendly guy called Masami Ibamoto, who promptly went on to show me how to play Magic! With his back against the wall, Masami’s Red/Black deck went all in with two Vampiric Slivers and a morph, leaving just a freshly cast Basal Sliver back. Sitting there with Yavimaya Dryad, a face down Thelonite Hermit about to be turned face up, a Durkwood Baloth, a Greenseeker, and a Scarwood Treefolk, I could smell tricks. I was almost certain that I was looking at a Liege of the Pit, having seen it go round the table earlier, but was at a healthy eleven life, with a Temporal Isolation in hand… but the Greenseeker needed to lose its summoning sickness next turn for me to fetch the much-needed Plains. I contemplated leaving the Slivers and gang-blocking the morph, to make sure I killed it with my two fat guys, but in the end I decided that I should block the two Slivers with the two guys, thus letting the Liege through, which would eventually kill anything he summoned while remaining Isolated.

Good plan, bad result.

With combat damage on the stack, he sacks his Slivers for Black mana unmorphs the Liege. Okay… this seems interesting, as they were dying anyway and not killing their blockers – why not do it before combat to deal an extra five to me!

End of combat, Sulfurous Blast… or as it’s also known, Wrath of Nick!

This left the Liege to deal the last 6 points of damage the next turn.

Game 2 – this game ran away from me again, this time with some very unlikely draws from my opponent. He found the defence he needed to stay alive against the onslaught of my fatties — a Sedge Sliver to boost the toughness of his Basal Sliver in time to stop my Havenwood Wurm going lethal.

8-3

Round 12
The last round of draft – time to put myself at a 50/50 record for the day!

This round I was playing against another really great guy, Xuan-Ji Wang of China. Xuan-Ji was playing a Red/Blue deck with a splash of White. The two games we had were both dominated by turn 4 Gauntlets, unsurprisingly set on Green. Both games I also found the Totem to go with this, and there was no way my opponent could get into these games as when I wasn’t swinging with a 6/4 trampling monstrosity, I was making 6/6 Baloths or end of turn 6/7 trampling flash Wurms for silly mana costs. Sometimes decks, even bad ones, just get those draws that are extremely difficult to halt. This was one of those times.

9-3

I didn’t perform as well as I had hoped during the draft portion – I was secretly hoping to 4-2 or better – but I still had myself in a really good position to make a good finish. I did need to hit day 3 running to lift myself up from unlucky thirteenth position, six points adrift of Paulo Vitor. The only problem there was that Extended was my least comfortable discipline of the week, with most of my preparation being theoretical and very little actual physical practice.

In an attempt to familiarise myself with the new decks that would probably be played the next day, I spend that evening hanging around the main hall watching the last few rounds of an Extended PTQ to see if I could get the feel for how the environment was panning out. In the morning I found out that I needn’t have bothered with this, as Quentin Martin was running around the place begging for Grim Lavamancers. No one had a large enough supply of to match the number of players wishing to run Boros Deck Wins. This information was enough for me to make one minor change to the list that I intended running – I actually made the change at the very last moment, just before I submitted my decklist, which is not something that I would necessarily advise doing, but it may have helped me slightly in the tournament in this case.

I had decided a couple of weeks before worlds that I would probably play a Gifts Rock variant, as I liked the versatility that the Gifts Ungiven package can provide in a new format, with answers to many of the questions posed by decks. I actually used a list posted by Frank Karsten at the end of August for his Online Tech article. I liked the look of the build, but being pre-Time Spiral I knew I needed to bring it up to date and make some minor changes to the list. Having played with the list a few times on MWS I knew that the core of the deck was solid and that I only wanted to tweak with the sideboard. The only extra inclusion maindeck was a solitary Krosan Grip, which I thought there would be many targets for in the field, from Counterbalance, Tops, Needles and Jittes, to Deeds and Ravagers, not to mention a maindeck answer to an Orim’s Chant on a stick!

The very last-minute change I made was banishing the Sensei’s Divining Top from the maindeck to the sideboard, as the Divining Top is more effective in a long game where you get time to abuse its card selectivity. I brought another Loxodon Hierarch in from the sideboard, to give me effectively seven silly elephants in the deck (taking into account the Living Wishes), which would hopefully allow me to live long enough to reach the late game against such a heavy Boros field!

For reference, here is my list:

Round 13
Arriving even more tired than the day before (these early mornings were starting to really get to me!) and under pressure to get some early wins under my cap, to relieve some pressure later, I was absolutely delighted to be facing the 2004 World Champion! Julien Nuijten was sitting down when I reached the table. We exchanged pleasantries, shuffle up, and immediately he started dropping guys and burn all over the place. I whiffed with an early Cabal Therapy on Sudden Shock, only for him to draw one the next turn for my Sakura-Tribe Elder. I, however, fortuitously drew a Deed before the damage on the table became lethal, and was able to stabilize on a very precarious three. This soon became one. At this point I still have my “seven” elephants to get me out of this trouble, but Julien’s deck has a lot of burn that will also do the job.

I manage to get a Genesis from my deck and go beatdown with it and an Elder, all the time expecting either Julien to top a burn spell for the game, or me to draw a silly elephant. Neither occurred. Somehow, several turns later, I take game 1 while still sitting on 1 life.

This game, and indeed match, hinges on a few turns of drawing from both of us. Julien finds no burn spells, only chump-blockers. I find no more elephants or Witnesses, but with the 4/4 and 2/1 beatdown I’m able to squeeze the result I was looking for… sorry Julien!

After the match I go out of the play area and collapse at a table with the English and Welsh players, absolutely exhausted from the ordeal. Julien comes over and start talking to Craig Jones, asking him for coaching on his topdecking skills! Craig couldn’t find any burn spells either – I think he was saving himself for big matches to come!

10-3

Round 14
Having cut the distance I trailed the leaders by to only three points, I sit down to play Rosario Maij of Germany. Looking at my opening two hands, I was disgusted to have to mulligan to five cards on the play. I devised a plan of how to compete with my one-land five, unaware of what my opponent was playing. I kept a Windswept Heath with a Birds of Paradise and a Living Wish. The plan: make Birds and Wish for a Golgari Rot Farm, and try to come back from there. However, after making the turn 1 Birds, Rosario very kindly opened with a start of artifact land, make some very undercosted dudes! This allowed me to untap, forget my entire plan, and wish for a Kataki, getting a grimace from Rosario.

I dropped to eleven, but once Kataki hit play his army crumbled. Though he found a kill spell for Kataki after a turn or two, he didn’t like my follow up play of Eternal Witness returning him. Rosario’s chances were not helped hugely by my maindeck Putrefies, Vindicate, Krosan Grip, and Pernicious Deed.

In game 2, although he found a Darkblast for Kataki, the other spells were able to take over, with a Grip taking out a Pithing Needle set to Pernicious Deed before I blew his board. This is a very strong matchup for my version of Gifts Rock, and I really needed this match at this point because I was mentally and physically exhausted.

11-3

Round 15
After a longer than normal rest, due to the shorter last round, myself and Oyvind Andersen sat down and shuffled up. We were about to start playing before someone official came scurrying over to us to ask us why we weren’t sat at our feature match table. We gathered up cards and belongings, went over the feature match area – I learned from my earlier mistake and made a comment about where I preferred my library. Oyvind was the opposite to me, so we swapped places, then some photographer came over and started taking snaps of his Powder Puff Girls lunchbox. We eventually got started. There is more detailed feature match coverage on the Wizards website, and you can read it here. Suffice to say this was another tough match. Game 1 was a short affair, with a Troll Ascetic and Wild Mongrel backed up by burn bulldozing their way through my life total. Games 2 and 3 were very long and drawn out affairs, and even though we had extra time for relocation it came down to extra turns. I was able to push through the advantage of a Gifts Ungiven (while holding an Eternal Witness) on my penultimate turn to take the match.

12-3

Round 16
At this point I was in the almost unbelievable position of having to win one and draw one of my last three rounds to be almost certain to make the Top 8 (not necessarily easy, considering the quality of my opponents at this stage, but not an absurd proposition). I was paired up this round against Jonathan Rispal of the French National Team. I had seen Jonathan playing at the end of most rounds while peering over the big crowds that had gathered during extra time. I knew he was playing something quirky, but hadn’t had time or the energy to watch carefully what was happening. In game 1 I got a 25-minute rest period to get myself focused and up to speed: on turn 1 Jonathan had suspended a Lotus Bloom, and on his turn 4 as the Bloom unsuspended I Krosan Gripped it. This caused Jonathan to call over a judge, who told him he could sac it for mana in response, I was a little curious, and he did some interesting things but didn’t seem to have managed to accomplish much apart from getting it and another one into play. Entering his main-phase, however, that all changed. I sat back and watched for 25 minutes, learning how his deck played, as he played egg and ball again and again. After I had had my fill, and he had drawn his deck, I conceded and shuffled up for game 2.

Looking at my hand, I immediately kept. I asked Jonathan if he was happy, he said yes, so before starting my turn I dropped a Leyline of the Void into play. This, coupled by a Cranial Extraction on turn 5 or 6 naming Cunning Wish, forced a very quick concession.

Game 3 I kept a reasonably quick-looking hand with a turn 3 Baloth off a Sakura-Tribe Elder, and a turn 1 Duress. These were aided by some artifact removal, which I carefully used in my turn to prevent any nasty recursion surprises. I drew into a Leyline reasonably early this game, and without any way of cycling eggs, and Duress having earlier revealed a rather weak hand, Jonathan had no outs and wished me luck.

13-3

Round 17
I drew Tiago Chan this round, and with us both sitting on 39 points a draw should be enough to get us into the Top 8. We sat down, and Tiago offered the draw. I admit, I did think briefly about playing this match, as at this point in the team competition we were flying high (mostly down to Roy and myself, both with 4-0 Extended records – Roy went on to post a 12-0 games record), but I decided that discretion should be used and I should guarantee my place in the Top 8. Maybe I could play the next round to help our cause.

Round 18
The last round of swiss! I had drawn another National Team member, Katsuhiro Mori of the Japanese team. I had seen Katsuhiro playing earlier and knew he was playing Psychatog, a match I knew that an opening hand Leyline would make extremely difficult for him, and generally quite a strong match for me in any case. I was extremely close to actually playing this match (looking back, I’m quite glad I didn’t, because of matches in the Top 8), but in the end I worked out that if I lost I would be on the required points for 8th place, but would almost certainly have better tiebreakers than others. However, it was this uncertainty that led me in the end to just take the draw.

This kept my swiss Constructed unbeaten record intact, and let me finally relax!

With the last round complete, they summoned the Top 8 players back to the hall, where they congratulated us all and forced us to sit down and fill in forms about our favorite color of car, brand of dog food, our favorite member of R&D etc. Once I had finally finished racking my brains trying to remember just how many PT Top 8s I had to my name, they dragged us all outside into the chilly Parisian night. We set up camp next to the Arc de Triomphe, ditched our bags (in Tiago’s case this was more than everyone else, as unfortunately he had been thrown out of his hotel earlier – he also told us that he had an unwinnable matchup, and would have to book another flight as well as another hotel room). We then spent fifteen minutes standing around in the cold, pulling daft faces and poses for the coverage team, before being told we could go off and enjoy the rest of our evening — all well and good for the four people who didn’t have to play all day tomorrow!

Unfortunately, with the team event to come the next day, and the team living all over the place we had had no time to practice a team draft… and in fact, I had never even done one before. We decided that evening to try to at least try to rectify this situation somewhat, and got together with the English team to grab a kebab from a local store, before trying a few team drafts against each other. Luckily, with us so far ahead of them in points by now, they didn’t try to poison us! However, during practice we spent a fair bit of time working out hand signals to use during the Rochester drafting, and attempting to coach an increasingly knackered me in how the wretched thing worked at all!

Unfortunately for the team:

a) We were to be told the next morning that talking was allowed during the drafts.
b) I was horribly distracted by Craig Jones and Stuart Wright, who scoured the Top 8 decklists, looking to feed me useful information!

The next day I was walking around like a zombie, which almost certainly didn’t help our cause during the first two drafts. It was up to Roy and Jimmy (who was also struggling a little) to make the picks and keep an eye on what people were drafting. Probably partly due to my internal sabotage, but quite a lot down to the good fortune of our opponents, we were edged out 2-1 2-1 against Portugal and Brazil, with me losing in both matches in extremely close circumstances, but probably not making any real game play errors. Luckily Jimmy and I perked up a bit as we moved into the afternoon, and were able to help Roy a little more. This probably contributed a little to us winning the next two rounds, though there was an unfortunate DQ of our opponents in the third round (though both flanks were in winning positions at the time of the incident, and it is quite probable that this wouldn’t have affected the overall result of the match). In the final match between us and China I was able to make some good plays to go with some solid draws, to edge out a very close second game after taking the first one against a mana-screwed opponent, putting us 2-0 up in matches and giving us an outside shot at a Top 4 finish for the teams. Unfortunately, other matches didn’t quite go our way, and we finished in a creditable sixth place overall.

That evening we headed out as a team, along with a few of the English players, to celebrate a successful Worlds campaign, chancing upon a delightful French restaurant where the rest of us decided to try l’escargots (not too bad, but not amazing). After eating, we decided to return to the main hall as we had heard rumours earlier that some of the guys had been testing my matchup against Katsuhiro’s deck. Returning to the hall however, all we found was a bunch of pro players sitting around playing cards and drinking from brown paper bags! We stopped to talk to Quentin and Frank, and found out that they didn’t know anything about who might have been doing this, or where they were, and they were somewhat surprised that I wasn’t either in bed asleep at midnight the night before the Top 8, or that I hadn’t been testing the matchup myself (or at least memorised my opponents decklist, or worked out how he would sideboard, or even how I would sideboard). Taking this advice on board, we took the 45-minute metro trip back to the hotel, sleeved up my opponent’s deck, and set about trying a few games. From these games I discovered it’s very hard to win when you mulligan to less than five on the play! Also I discovered that I wasn’t winning any of the games, but reducing him to a low life total in most games. I figured that this was either because I sucked, my opponents deck was obscene, or maybe it was due to my inability to find any one-drops while practicing!

In the end I decided it was probably due to the latter, and vowed to keep as many one-drop hands as possible, or at least mulligan aggressively to hands with a fair bit of pressure. Keeping a hand without cheap creatures in this matchup is as good as losing the game before you start a lot of the time, as it gives them too much time to dig to find the answers the deck needs, instead of spending their resources fending off waves of attackers.

Waking up the next morning after literally a few hours sleep, I stumbled into the venue and started wandering around talking to well-wishers (no, not the elves that tap for life). I got startled after a while when a judge came running in shouting that they were looking for me. I hurried over to be told that they were about to start without me, which probably wouldn’t be great for my Top 8 prospects! They ushered me into the room that had been used for the team event the day before, but was now transformed into a massive TV studio, with cameras, backdrops, and a sound-proof booth where they could spot and discuss all the errors I was about to make. Everyone else was already in there sat down, ready to start (I had apparently misheard my instructions as to what time to be there, and was planning on turning up thirty minutes late despite having been in the building for nearly three quarters of an hour). They quickly mic’ed me up and told me to get on with shuffling up and resolving mulligans. Being so flustered at this point, I was very happy for them to wait to get all the technical stuff sorted as it gave me time to calm down. The lights are extremely hot and add to the pressure that having a sizeable chunk of the world’s Magic community watching you for any error already lends.

Once the match started however, I fell back into the mode that I had been using all week, just focusing on the game, trying to ignore who my opponent was and what they had won in the past, and just play the cards that the two decks turned up. I was delighted against Katsuhiro that I was able to keep or mulligan into aggressive hands that usually involved Savannah Lions, my standout card for my Top 8 matches. I tried to use Stone Rains, especially on the play, as I feel that frequently the Tron player in the face of an aggressive start feels forced to commit themselves to a Compulsive Research or Signet on turn 2 or 3, leaving themselves completely open to a frequently very damaging Stone Rain. This literally reads “Time Walk target opponent.” They also let me disrupt a Triskelavus / Academy Ruins, or perhaps more importantly an Urza’s Factory that can very quickly take a game away from me.

After finishing my match with Katsuhiro — you can read the coverage here – I got up a little groggily, having spent a lot of nervous energy, and was promptly told by John Becker that I was going nowhere (because they didn’t trust me to come back on time). They told me I could have a few minutes to rest, and drink some water. I asked who I was to be playing, expecting to be told I was to face the Gruul deck, but was shocked to hear that Ryu had beaten him 3-0. Knowing that Ryu was playing the exact same deck that I had just beaten made me think just for a second about a possible birth in the final, but I tried to remain focused and not get complacent or careless. I reminded myself… “one turn at a time!”

The match against Ryu — again, with coverage here – was extremely close match that really could have gone either way, although I have heard the commentary on the match, I’m still not sure that even if given the chance again (without being able to see my opponent’s hand) I would have played it any differently. What the coverage also doesn’t show is that in that third game I had that Stone Rain and two lands in my opening grip, and Ryu taps out in two consecutive turns to play spells. Had I drawn a land in my first three or four draws, then there would also likely have been a different outcome to that game.

Game 5 was an extremely frustrating one for myself, as on the draw I was faced with a hand that was Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author], three Savannah Lions, a Magus of the Scroll, and two burn spells. A better hand against a control play is not often seen, (if you draw a land in your first two draws, and it’s not awful if you draw by the third), but sadly my deck just wouldn’t offer me up the land I so badly needed. I’m hopefully not going to be too bitter about losing this match, as I lost to a great player playing a good deck. I had my own share of good luck at times during the earlier rounds of the tournament. All the same, it is exceptionally hard not to look at those “oh so closes,” and wonder about what would have happened if I had made it all the way… A thought that is made so much clearer, considering I had played against so much Dragonstorm during testing. I knew the matchup very well and had, I believe, a favorable matchup after sideboarding.

After the match I took the coverage team up on their very kind offer of joining them for the staff end of tournament lunch, and sat chatting to two members of the Dutch team that were about to play in the finals, making a lemon of myself by failing to recognise Kamiel Cornelissen and asking him who he was!

As far as Magic tournaments go, this one – for obvious reasons – was very taxing in terms of its length and level of play… and despite that, it was oddly extremely enjoyable. I don’t think I played against anyone that was so focused on winning that they forgot that Magic is actually a game, and that they should enjoy each moment of performing on such a big stage with people from all around the globe.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the guys in Cardiff and at The Games Club who lent me cards and practiced different formats with me; The Collective in London who supported me all along; Neil for getting me started playing Magic; Roy and Magnus for all the testing and card pooling on MTGO; my parents for putting up with me loafing around the house playing Magic and refusing to get a proper job; and anyone else who I have neglected to mention on purpose, just to check if they were reading carefully!

See you on the Pro Tour!

Nick
Lovett dot nick at gmail dot com
Leafstar on MTGO