The alternative title to this article was "Pro Tour Aetherling," but I thought it lacked a certain "je ne sais quoi" since Voice of Resurgence ended up winning the whole thing.
Two weekends ago was Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze. As more and more people are beginning to realize, the odds of your success at Pro Tours (and even Grand Prix) increases dramatically if you have a competent team. A competent team can ensure that you remain focused, find the best decks, and learn how to draft. I did not have a team, but don’t worry! What I do have are steps that you can follow to guarantee you’ll make money at your very first (or next) Pro Tour.
Steps to Being Awesome & Doing Well at the Pro Tour
Step 1: Don’t be on a team. Teams are stupid and a waste of time. Why would you want an efficient way to organize and test a format? That sounds like too much work to me. Instead, fly solo. Be your own unique snowflake. So what if you show up with a subpar deck? At least you don’t have to share the credit with a team.
Step 2: Don’t bother testing the format. When your friends ask you what your opinion is of the format, be just vague enough so that it sounds like you’ve been testing the format a lot. A conversation should go something like this:
Non-the-wiser Friend: "Hey, how’s the format shaping up? Do you think Esper is the deck to play? Or maybe it’s Bant?"
You: "Yeah man, totally. Aetherling is amazing. It has so many abilities! But you can’t forget that there are other cards in the format. I would tell you more about the format, but I’m really trying to keep my deck secret."
What this accomplishes is that your friends will think you have a really sweet deck to play when in actuality you’re really about to move on to step 3.
Step 3: Do you have a friend qualified for the Pro Tour? Beg him or her for a deck. Ask what deck they’re playing. If they don’t want to give out what deck they’re playing without you putting some effort in, then quickly put together a deck and challenge them to battle. This kills two birds with one horribly made stone. Your friend will think you’ve been putting time and effort, and they’ll probably feel comfortable enough to give you a deck. After all, you did just convince them that deck you threw together is going to be easy to beat at the Pro Tour with their deck of choice!
Step 4: Don’t draft the format. Drafting is a waste of time; you don’t even get to build your own deck! Besides, you’re probably going to either a) luck out and 3-0 the pod with an insane deck or b) somehow go 0-3 in a pod with a bye. Preparing for Draft is just lighting packs on fire. You might not even get the cards back that you opened! So what if the best pick is the uncommon? I want all the rares!
Step 5: Make sure you stay up all night worrying about the choices you’ve made about the tournament. Is it midnight? Is the tournament tomorrow? You better be awake figuring out that last sideboard slot. Is it 2 AM? Are you still trying to figure out that last slot? You’d better look over your entire deck and start questioning every card choice and number since you’re awake anyways. Is it 5 AM? Are you still awake? Well, you should be. Head down to the local coffee shop, order the biggest coffee they sell, and take out your deck. Question everything. If people have wasted time sleeping while you’re perfecting your deck, then they deserve to lose. This brings me to the next step.
Step 6: Make sure you’re on the razor’s edge during the tournament. Avoid sleeping, eating, and drinking anything the night before/day of the tournament. You want your wits about you, razor sharp, ready to pick up on all the subtle nuances of how your opponent is playing the game. While your opponent is allegedly feeling "well-rested," they’re actually just becoming sluggish in their thinking. You’ll play circles around them, trust me. And don’t worry, in the unlikely event you pass out, there are plenty of people around to make sure you’ll be up and ready for the next round.
Step 7: Finally, the last step of the Pro Tour. If you’ve followed all of my advice so far, you should be playing for anywhere from Top 75 all the way up to Top 8. The last step? If you win money but don’t qualify for the next Pro Tour, start complaining incessantly. This complaining will allow the people around you to know that you won money on the weekend (unlike some of your friends) but that you are largely unsatisfied with how the weekend went. If you complain loud enough and often enough, some of your friends might eventually start to feel bad for you.
Super-Exciting Tournament Report
I won’t bore you with details, but I’ll try to give some highlights about the matches if I remember enough about them. Sixteen rounds is a rather long tournament, and I’ve forgotten a lot about the earlier rounds on day 1. For the record, here’s the deck I played in Constructed. The list is courtesy of Caleb Durward, who basically saved my Pro Tour experience by shipping me a list. The other hero of the Pro Tour was my friend Jurkis Magararu, who put together the entire block Format so I could put together a deck. Huge thanks to the both of them for allowing me to worry about finishing up college rather than deck choice/construction.
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (14)
Basically, the games play out the same no matter what archetype you are against. You play all the good threats. All of your cards are good against aggro and control, so there is no real danger of drawing a card like Far // Away against control like Esper decks might do. Instead, every single card is useful against a variety of decks. Anyway, on to the tournament we go!
Draft 1
I drafted what was essentially a two-color deck. Golgari was wide open in my pod, so I took a Deadbridge Chant that was passed to me and moved all-in. My deck was so-so; it was very midrange-ish. I had a light splash for Kingpin’s Pet and Alms Beast so that I would have slightly more reach and some big cheap bodies. I also had four or five removal spells of different varieties
Round 1 vs. Andrew Shrout (1-2, 0-1 overall)
I’d never met JohnnyHotSauce in person before this, but we’d interacted a few times on Magic Online. I’d like to congratulate him on his Top 8 at this Pro Tour (I believe his first one too) since I helped him get to that point by losing.
Oh yeah, I lost this round.
Game 1 he rolled me with Way of the Thief on a Stealer of Secrets (I actually had to look up both of those cards; I don’t get along well with Limited). He pretty much went all-in despite sitting to my right in the draft and passing me at least four pieces of removal. I couldn’t beat him drawing an extra card every turn and clocking me a healthy amount.
Game 2 I had to do something I’m terrible at: combat math. The game got to a state where our boards were relatively even, and then I resolved a Deadbridge Chant. Seeing as I’m a combo player at heart, I have no idea what to do when the board state stalls. After a few turns passed of me slowly gaining an advantage, Andrew scooped to move on to game 3. He scooped saying, and I quote, "I’ll save you the trouble of doing combat math." Mr. Hot Sauce sure is a nice guy.
Game 3 he had a really aggressive draw, and I died to a bunch of Centaur tokens.
Round 3 vs. Thomas Enevoldsen (0-2, 1-2 overall)
I got absolutely destroyed by his aggressive Jund deck. My triple Trestle Trolls didn’t quite keep me in the game long enough—probably because my hand was clogged with three Maze Abominations instead of cards lower down on the curve.
Ok, I was finally out of the draft, and I was about where I expected to be. Seeing as I very rarely draft, getting just one match win was about what I expected. I was really excited to get into Constructed because I had prepared a lot more for it than I had for Draft. And by prepared more for it I mean I played about two games with Bant, two with Mono-Red Aggro, and a seven-game set against Caleb Durward with G/B/W (how else do you think I tricked Caleb into giving me a deck?).
I was so unprepared that I was actively reading my opponent’s cards.
I was so unprepared that I didn’t get an actual token for my heavy token deck until round 16 against Tom Martell when he let me borrow one of his.
I was so unprepared that I lost when I had two Aetherlings in play.
Round 4 vs. Fern Dominguez Roldan (2-1, 2-2 overall)
This was the Bant mirror and essentially my first time playing the Bant deck. Yeah, waiting until your first Constructed round at a PT to play your deck is probably a bad idea. I lost game 1 when I got out double Aetherling somehow (he had three or four Wurm tokens, and a timely Azorius Charm gained him fifteen life). Games 2 and 3 I believe he either got raced by Aetherling, drew nothing but lands, or was missing a color. All of the above may have happened; all I remember is that I needed to tighten up if I wanted to do well.
Round 6 vs. Alp Humbaraci (2-0, 3-3 overall)
Alp was a friendly guy who had won a PTQ in Turkey. Unfortunately for him he was playing Esper, a very favorable match up for me. Literally the only thing I have written on my life pad is him going from 20 to 22 and then me winning the game. There is also a note under both game 1 and game 2 that reads "AETHERLING LOLOL," so I’m assuming I resolved Aetherling in games 1 and 2 and promptly hit him in the face.
Round 8 vs. Francisco Moreno Morales (0-2, 4-4 overall)
This was against a Naya Midrange deck. My life total went from fifteen to dead in game 1, so I can only imagine something terrible happened to me. I think he overloaded a Mizzium Mortars, which wiped out most of my board and let his 5/5s trample over for lethal. In game 2, I mulliganed to four but put up a very reasonable fight. I took a bunch of damage to start with, but I eventually stabilized through some miracle. And then he cast Boros Reckoner. Now, normally this isn’t a problem because I can chump block with a 1/1 Bird token or I can just take the damage. The problem occurred on the next turn. He cast—you guessed it—Armed // Dangerous. Let’s just say that I had more power in play than my current life total.
Francisco was a really great guy, though, and super friendly. Throughout the next day, he kept giving me a thumbs up after checking how I was doing after each round. It’s always refreshing when your opponents are friendly and actually want to track your progress out of concern for a new friend they made rather than over concern for their breakers.
After day 1 was over, I went out to a Brazilian steakhouse. I had never gone to one of them before, but oh…my…god…I WAS MISSING OUT ON SO MUCH! These places are SO good. You want meat? Bring the meat! You want a salad bar? You got it! After our meal, I went back to my room that I was splitting with fellow competitor Michael Bernat (congratulations and daggers for his 26th place finish) and promptly fell asleep.
Draft 2
As soon as I woke up, I posted a quick status on Facebook—something to the tune of "Just need to casually X-0 today for Ireland!" Little did I know that I was actually not far off in my prediction.
My deck from the second draft was VERY aggressive. Here it is (I saved it because I 3-0ed the pod, something which I never dreamed in a million years would happen)
Creatures (14)
- 1 Grim Roustabout
- 2 Thrill-Kill Assassin
- 1 Gore-House Chainwalker
- 1 Zhur-Taa Swine
- 1 Legion Loyalist
- 1 Balustrade Spy
- 1 Scorchwalker
- 2 Skinbrand Goblin
- 1 Ruination Wurm
- 1 Sire of Insanity
- 1 Rakdos Drake
- 1 Riot Piker
Lands (17)
Spells (9)
It seemed that black was very open at my table. I ended up getting fourth and fifth pick Stab Wounds. I also wheeled Thrill-Kill Assassin and Ultimate Price. I realize that there are a lot of multicolored creatures out there nowadays, but Ultimate Price still clears blockers plenty fine to me. As I sat down across from THE Patrick Sullivan for deck registration/construction, he seemed to have the same exact thought I did. "Well, I drafted 23 playables. That was easy."
Round 10 vs. Jelger Wiegersma (2-1, 6-4 overall)
All three games were extremely close, and I felt very lucky to beat him. Game 1 I maneuvered it so that as soon as I drew my sixth land I could slam it down and basically Lava Axe him with Toil // Trouble. What I didn’t expect is that he would respond with Aerial Predation + an Extort trigger to live with exactly three life. Needless to say I died on the spot.
Game 2 I got a really aggressive draw, and Stab Wound finished him off. The second turn I had it out I actually missed the trigger, which set me back by a turn. Coincidentally, he could have killed me on that turn if I had not used Devour Flesh on my own guy to live through exactly lethal.
Game 3 he had a bunch of expensive and multicolored cards in his hand, while I just smashed him in the face with some dudes and cast Toil // Trouble for lethal.
Round 11 vs. Andrew Cantillana (2-0, 7-4 overall)
He had a really good Esper deck with a lot of removal. Luckily, I had tons of guys to feed to his removal. Game 1 he used a bunch of removal early, and I resolved a Sire of Insanity and said go. He promptly discarded six cards and died a few turns later. Game 2 I used Stab Wounds to close the door on him.
We did it! We 3-0ed a draft! This is literally the best I’ve ever done in Limited. I don’t even win 4-3-2-2 drafts on Magic Online. Now that the horrible format that is known as Limited was over, I could move on to playing Constructed—my specialty.
Round 13 vs. Brian DeMars (2-1, 9-4 overall)
Game 1 he played a Blood Baron of Vizkopa, and I died. I had a reasonable shot at winning if I drew an Aetherling within a turn of Blood Baron hitting play, but I didn’t and died really fast. In game 2, I landed an Aetherling, and he died. I’m sure there were more intricacies involved, but honestly Aetherling is a very silly Magic card. Game 3 was more back and forth until I resolved an Aetherling. The turn after I resolved said Aetherling, Brian untapped and spent about three minutes in the tank with a judge watching. After a bit, he got a slow play warning, became flustered, and made what was described to me later as the wrong line of play.
As a side note, this story is not meant to bash on Brian in any way; he was a very respectable opponent. If you’re on the critical turn of a game and a judge is watching the match for slow play, take your time. The big takeaway is that you can’t let a judge giving you a slow play warning affect your state of mind. The actual advice the judge gave after the game was that you can just eat a slow play warning to make the correct decision as long as you’re not in danger of getting another slow play warning. I felt bad that Brian became unnerved by the judge call since I know he plays a lot of control decks and having your critical decision rushed usually leads to a wrong decision.
Round 15 vs. Tomoharu Saito (2-0, 11-4 overall)
Saito was playing U/W Control. I didn’t know this after game 1 because he played a Precinct Captain, went to the discard step a few times, and died. In game 2, I managed to resolve an Aetherling, and I beat him down with it. The game seemed slightly closer than it was after he resolved two Angel of Serenitys, but it didn’t end up mattering because Aetherling is a hell of a card. After the match, he had some very wise words after I tried to say sorry about game 1:
"That’s Magic."
Round 16 vs. Tom Martell (1-2, 11-5 overall, 30th place)
Here I was. My hopeful morning status of casually 8-0ing day 2 of the Pro Tour was very close to becoming a reality. All I had to do was get through the last Pro Tour winner. Seems simple enough, right?
Apparently not.
Remember when Phil asks Hercules, "So you wanna be a hero, kid?" and then goes on to say "Well whoop de doo."? Picture Tom being the Danny DeVito to my Tate Donovan (I had to look that up—I’m not ashamed to admit that). There I was playing in what was essentially the finals of two PTQs at once against the last Pro Tour champion. How did the games go? I played the worst Magic I’ve ever played game 1 and lost a game because of it where I was virtually very far ahead the whole time. Basically, I should have been jamming my threats more than I was, and I gave him too much time to pull back into it with some Sphinx’s Revelations.
Game 2 I landed an Aetherling, and he died.
Game 3 I mirrored his plays exactly, but because the new legend/planeswalker rule wasn’t in place yet, my Jace was a LOT worse than his after I copied that play.
And so it all ended. My amazing undefeated run on day 2 was crushed by the juggernaut of a player in Tom Martell. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t hold any ill will towards Tom; we both agreed that it was bad luck we were playing each other since we both think highly of each other. (I mean, he has to like me, right? He accepted my friend request on Facebook!) I’m sure if circumstances had been different, he would have helped me qualify for Dublin. As it stood, the extra Pro Points actually did matter for him, so I can’t blame him for not wanting to draw me into the Top 25.
An Amazing Weekend Ends
There you have it—my gigantic article all about my Pro Tour weekend. Unlike when I played in Pro Tour Philadelphia, I actually made day 2 and some money, so this time I had some stuff to write about. I would like to give a special thanks to the Chicago players for making me feel welcome among them. After this weekend, I’d like to think I’m an unofficial Chicago Magic player. Next time I see all of you guys, I’m definitely going to get you some fancy drinks, like a Coors Light or something.
Huge congratulations to Craig Wescoe for absolutely rocking this Pro Tour. Who could have guessed that letting Craig play a deck that is right in his wheelhouse would be a good idea? Finally, I’d like to thank all of you guys for reading this monstrosity of an article. I’m sure Cedric is going to have a field day with his editor’s notes.
Hopefully I’ll see you guys at Pro Tour Theros
Krazykirby4 on Magic Online
@krazykirby4 on Twitter