Grand Prix Richmond is now behind us. It didn’t quite reach the attendance record set by Grand Prix Las Vegas, but it came close, weighing in at 4303 players when all was said and done. It may not have been the biggest Grand Prix of all time, but it was the biggest Constructed tournament of all time and by a pretty huge margin.
Why was Richmond so big? Well, there quite a few possible explanations. The tournament was Modern, which is a format that has been heavily promoted by Wizards of the Coast recently. After all, the record that Richmond was trying to topple was set by Vegas, which was the only Grand Prix in the Modern Masters format. The additional infusion of Modern staples from that set only served to drive the prices up on cards like Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, and Cryptic Command as a result of the massive increase in demand for the format generated by the set. The Grand Prix was coming on the heels of a Modern Pro Tour that was following a banned and list update that looked to loosen Jund’s virtual stranglehold on the format. There was a lot about the format for people to be excited about.
Richmond is also in a very easily accessible location for a huge number of people. While my own journey was hardly an easy one, something like two-thirds of the population of the entire country lives within an eight-hour drive of Richmond. Unlike a tournament somewhere like Nebraska, it was easy for a group of friends at their local store to decide to take a road trip to Richmond. Once the buzz started building, I imagine that’s exactly what happened in many cases. A group of friends hanging out at their local store started talking about how Grand Prix Richmond was going to be such a huge event, and they decided that they wanted to drive out and be a part of it.
The biggest reason the tournament was so huge in my mind is the reach of StarCityGames.com. It’s not a coincidence that the third biggest North American Grand Prix—GP Charlotte last year—was also run by StarCityGames.com. If you watched any SCGLive coverage in the weeks leading up to Richmond, like I did, you couldn’t help but hear about the event. The entire team marketed it as "The Can’t-Miss Magic Event of the Year" from the beginning, and in the end they delivered.
As many of you might already know—either from my blog entry on the subject or from Cedric Phillips and Patrick Chapin talking about how crazy I was in the coverage of SCG Open Series: Atlanta—I went to pretty ridiculous lengths to attend GP Richmond. I was in Austin, Texas on Friday night to give a presentation at the SXSW Gaming Expo and ended up taking a far too expensive flight out on Saturday morning so I could make it in time for the tournament. I ended up getting maybe two hours of sleep before I had to head to the airport, and I arrived at the tournament venue with maybe an hour to spare before my byes were over and it was time for me to play.
I ended up playing the exact list that I posted last week in my article at the Grand Prix:
Creatures (26)
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 2 Qasali Pridemage
- 3 Scavenging Ooze
- 2 Thundermaw Hellkite
- 2 Loxodon Smiter
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (10)
My tournament went like this:
Round 1-3: Byes (and flying)
Round 4: 2-0, Win vs. B/G Midrange (camera match), 4-0
Round 5: 0-2, Loss vs. B/G Midrange, 4-1
Round 6: 2-0, Win vs. Rug Twin, 5-1
Round 7: 1-2, Loss vs. Affinity, 5-2
Round 8: 2-0, Win vs. Tribal Zoo, 6-2
Round 9: 2-1, Win vs. U/W/R Control, 7-2
Round 10: 2-1, Win vs. Affinity, 8-2
Round 11: 1-2, Loss vs. Merfolk, 8-3
Round 12: 2-1, Win vs. Affinity, 9-3
Round 13: 0-2, Loss vs. Melira Pod (Josh Utter-Leyton), 9-4
Round 14: 0-2, Loss vs. Burn, 9-5
Round 15: 2-1, Win vs. G/W Auras (but conceded because he needed Planeswalker Points for byes), 10-5 (officially 9-6)
Overall, I was quite happy with the deck. It performed well in the matchups I expected, and many of my losses felt like they were the result of fairly extreme bad luck or some subtle mistakes on my part.
In my first loss, which was against B/G Midrange, I actually played a fifteen-turn game in which I never drew a single source of green mana and yet somehow managed to be close. I mulliganed and then kept the following:
I got Thoughtseized and Inquisition of Kozileked and lost my Qasali Pridemage and Domri Rade, and I kept my Arid Mesa in play uncracked until my opponent played Liliana of the Veil after I’d drawn a second Lightning Bolt. I fetched Sacred Foundry to turn on my Bolts and Path to Exiled and Bolted him take some pressure off of Liliana’s ultimate, and then I let him tick up again as I discarded uncastable cards and he discarded removal spells. I Pathed one of his two Courser of Kruphix and a Phyrexian Obliterator, and when he was empty handed and ticked up his Liliana, I put the Loxodon Smiter I had drawn into play, leaving me with a 4/4 against his empty hand and 2/4.
I killed Liliana of the Veil and left him playing off the top, but his remaining Courser of Kruphix fed him extra lands—including two copies of Treetop Village—and eventually he drew a Maelstrom Pulse to kill my Loxodon Smiter and allow himself attack. When I died, I had a fist full of Tarmogoyf, with only the Sacred Foundry I’d fetched and my one basic Plains I’d drawn in play.
My loss to Merfolk felt like it could have been avoided. After my opponent led with an Aether Vial, I took three damage to fetch a Stomping Ground untapped on my first turn instead of a basic Forest to play a Noble Hierarch. My thought was that I wanted to ensure I had enough red sources to play my removal in case my opponent targeted them with Spreading Seas. He ended up immediately using Seas on that land, meaning that I took two damage for no gain whatsoever, and I wound up losing an extremely close game when my opponent killed me exactly the turn before I would have been able to attack him for lethal.
Against Wrapter playing Melira Pod, I lost a close first game when he was able to Chord of Calling up a Shriekmaw to take out my Thundermaw Hellkite and then attack me for lethal. I was extremely far ahead in the next game, with Domri Rade and multiple copies of Aven Mindcensor in play against Eternal Witness, Kitchen Finks, and Shriekmaw on his side of the board and him at one life.
I ended up chump blocking with a Birds of Paradise to save my Domri Rade and then watching as he had back-to-back removal spells to kill my Aven Mindcensors, leaving me unable to get the last point of damage through his ground defenses. If I hadn’t chumped with my Birds, I would have been able to force him to use removal on it when I attacked him with exalted triggers from my Qasali Pridemage and Noble Hierarch, and then one of my Mindcensors would have been able to get in for the final point.
Even in massive tournaments with record-breaking attendance, Magic is a game of inches. Missing a single point of damage—or dealing two unnecessary points of damage to yourself—can be the difference between getting the chance to play for the trophy and being lost in the crowd. A little bit of focus can make a big difference, and playing on virtually no sleep certainly didn’t help mine.
I will say too that I knew even at the time that I wasn’t playing at my best against Wrapter. It has long been a problem of mine that I lose some of my focus when I’m out of contention for my goals in a tournament. Even when we sat down to play with three losses, Wrapter and I joked that we were playing for the right to complain that we didn’t get any Pro Points with an X-3 record if we won out. As someone whose goal at the event was to accumulate Pro Points, I felt discouraged as soon as I picked up my second loss and was virtually drawing dead for Top 8 and basically felt like I was out of the tournament already once I lost for a third time. That’s clearly my own fault, but it says something about these huge tournaments—many other pro players shared similar thoughts with me.
In any case, now that I have another Modern tournament with Big Zoo under my belt, I’m still quite happy with the deck. Looking at the final standings of the Grand Prix, we can see a pretty clear breakdown of the top decks in the format. Fourteen of the eighteen decks with a record of 13-2 or better from Richmond were one of three different decks: Birthing Pod, Affinity, or Splinter Twin. I’m definitely happy to run into any of those when I’m playing Big Zoo and have a number of options if I want to bias my deck further toward those matchups to strengthen them even more.
If I were to attend another Modern tournament tomorrow, this is what I’d play:
Creatures (27)
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 3 Qasali Pridemage
- 3 Scavenging Ooze
- 2 Thundermaw Hellkite
- 2 Loxodon Smiter
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (9)
There are only a few subtle changes here because I think the deck overall is still quite solid. I cut one copy of Lightning Helix from the maindeck for a third copy of Qasali Pridemage. Pridemage is an incredibly underrated card in Modern, especially in a world where the most popular decks all include important artifacts and enchantments. Twin and Pod are both named after cards that Pridemage can destroy, and Affinity is a deck full of nothing but. It’s certainly not the threat you’re looking for against something like U/W/R Control, but you’re not in the market for a Lightning Helix there either.
This change certainly marginally weakens the deck against opposing aggressive decks like Zoo, but those seem to be largely falling out of favor. Lightning Helix is definitely your best card against hyperaggressive Zoo decks or something like Burn, but I feel like the former is still a good matchup and the latter is bad enough that it’s not worth putting too much effort into improving. Qasali Pridemage also incidentally gives you more game against cards like Batterskull, Blood Moon, and Ensnaring Bridge that could otherwise give you a lot of trouble. It’s really an incredible catchall answer on an aggressive body, and it’s a wonder to me that people overlook it as often as they do.
In the sideboard the changes are the removal of the second copy of Fracturing Gust and the Ethersworn Canonist in favor of a single copy of Stony Silence and one copy of Thrun, the Last Troll. Canonist gets the axe in the wake of Storm’s failure to make its presence felt in Richmond—it may be a strong deck, but it isn’t popular enough to warrant more than the one dedicated slot in Rule of Law.
The additional Qasali Pridemage in the maindeck goes a long way in the Auras matchup, which makes me feel like a second Gust is less important there. Stony Silence is a much more powerful card against Affinity since it can basically end the game on the spot if you cast it in the first few turns. It’s possible that you’d rather have two copies of Stony Silence and only one copy of Ancient Grudge, especially since you have three copies of Pridemage to hedge against non-Affinity decks with artifacts. I’m kind of on the fence since Grudge is more versatile and still very powerful, but if Affinity remains as popular as it was in Richmond, it’s probably correct to bias toward Stony Silence.
Thrun, the Last Troll is there to give you more options against controlling decks like U/W/R and B/G and also has value against other Zoo decks. I could also see playing something like Batterskull, which is more powerful against non-counterspell-based control decks and against Zoo, but Thrun seems particularly attractive with RUG Twin becoming as popular as it has. It’s certainly a card I’d rather have in my deck against anyone with Cryptic Command.
Remember, even if the top decks at Grand Prix Richmond were very similar, the format is still tremendously diverse. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to build some kind of highly focused metagame deck just to beat Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, and Affinity because you’ll find yourself playing against Scapeshift, Merfolk, and W/B Tokens and quickly get kicked to the curb. Play something powerful and proactive and look for flexible cards that can improve your matchups against the big decks while still offering value elsewhere both for your maindeck and your sideboard.
What do you think? In the wake of GP Richmond, what deck would you play in Modern tomorrow?