A couple of weeks back, I was at GenCon. For those of you who have never been to GenCon, you’re seriously missing out. While Pro Tours and Grand Prix are the true hotbeds of competitive Magic, it is at GenCon that Magic put down roots in the gamer world so many years ago. It is truly the gamer’s game convention. From the moment the convention begins until the moment it ends, the entirety of downtown Indianapolis is taken over by a veritable mob of gamers. It is truly a sight to behold.
My own involvement with GenCon has spanned the past five years. My first time at the convention was back in 2004 for the first VS System pro circuit, an event that I was fortunate enough to win. Since then, however, I’ve spent most of my time at GenCon working in the exhibit hall doing demos. And despite what can be a long four days in the booth teaching games to new players, I always enjoy it. Unlike events like ComicCon, which are full of people just going booth to booth for free stuff, GenCon is full of people who genuinely love games, and demoing for them is almost universally a pleasure.
That being said, when given the choice of teaching games or playing them myself, I’m almost always going to choose the latter. Last year was the first time I had any free time at GenCon in quite a while, and I came to the event to play in both of the PTQs. I didn’t realize until I showed up that coming a day early just to play in the Block Championships would have been easily worth my while, since the prize for the event was four foil sets of the entire block, with four normal sets going to second place. That kind of prize support is something you don’t find very often (outside of the $5000 Open series put on this year by this fine website), so I resolved myself to try to find a way to play in the event this year.
Fortunately, this year’s Block Championships took place on Thursday in the afternoon, which meant I could just take off a bit early from doing Chaotic demos in the exhibit hall and jump right into the tournament. Unfortunately, that meant I had to play Alara Block Constructed, a format that I’d hoped never to play again.
Don’t get me wrong — I had a lot of fun playing Alara Block at Pro Tour: Honolulu, but that was only because I had an aggressive rogue deck that the rest of the field wasn’t remotely prepared for. I had no illusions that I could play Esper Stoneblade again at the Block Championships; not only was the surprise factor gone, but the deck was actually made significantly weaker by the M10 rules changes, since much of the power of Thopter Foundry relied on the ability to stack damage. Despite this, I expected the deck to be reasonably popular in the tournament field. It’s an aggressive deck that’s incredibly cheap to put together that was very successful in the last major event in the format — how could it not be?
I won’t pretend I spent long hours testing to find the perfect foil to the expected metagame. I did not play a game of Alara Block Constructed between PT: Honolulu and GenCon. The only thing I did was look at the decklists from Hawaii and consider the implications of everyone having the same information about the field. Cascade was still the obvious deck to play, in particular because Jim Davis had the best overall constructed record in the event with a Naya/Jund Cascade build and a big deal was made of both his success and his decision to draw first in every match. Both G/W Beatdown and Esper Stoneblade were likely to show up, but I did not expect stronger players to be running either since the success of those two decks in Hawaii was largely due to a lack of cards like Infest in the metagame.
That left Five-Color Control. I hadn’t been a big fan of Five-Color Control leading up to Hawaii because of its vulnerability to Anathamancer, but the list Zac Hill played to his Top 8 finish seemed to have game against Anathamancers between Traumatic Visions and the life gain of Ajani Vengeant and Obelisk of Alara. Perhaps more importantly, I was excited by the prospect of cascading into Wall of Denial. The untargetable 0/8 had proven to be the most important card in all of our Five-Color Control decks in testing way back when, and more chances to hit it seemed fantastic to me. The deck seemed like it would demolish all of the low power beatdown decks like G/W, overpower the other Cascade decks with card draw and Cruel Ultimatum, and at worst hold its own against whatever other decks might come out of the woodwork. I sent the list to a friend, and borrowed literally Zac’s deck card for card other than a few tweaks to the sideboard. I cut one Celestial Purge, one Deny Reality, and two Qasali Pridemages to fit two Infest and two Thought Hemorrhage, concessions to the changed metagame and the expectation that most of the best players in the room would be playing Five-Color Control, and I wanted a little something extra to fight Blightning/Ultimatum wars.
This is the deck I played:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (19)
- 3 Cruel Ultimatum
- 4 Esper Charm
- 4 Traumatic Visions
- 1 Obelisk of Alara
- 4 Maelstrom Pulse
- 3 Bituminous Blast
Sideboard
The tournament had only 64 players, which meant 6 rounds of swiss before the cut to the Top 8. My first four pairing in the swiss rounds were against a Jund Cascade deck, two Esper beatdown decks (one of which played Punish Ignorance and sideboarded both Countersquall and Soul Manipulation), and one G/W Beatdown deck, and I won all of them, letting me double draw in the final two rounds. The Top 8 consisted of four Five-Color Control decks (Gerry Thompson, Nick Bevcar, Wen Tsun Chuan, and me), three Jund decks (Brian Kowal, Nick Boomer, and Shawn DeMain), and one G/W Beatdown deck played by Scott Nocco. Pretty much exactly the field I was expecting.
My first round opponent in the Top 8 was Shawn DeMain, who related to me an amusing story about his preparation for the tournament. See, the Gen Con staff had listed the Block Championships as including both Alara Block and M10 as legal sets, and when confused attendees called up GenCon to confirm, the convention staff, who didn’t know any better, informed them that yes, that was in fact the format for the tournament. I don’t know who was initially responsible for the error, but apparently it led poor Shawn to playtest Alara Block/M10 Constructed for weeks, only to find out when he showed up for the event that the program and the staff who he’d called were wrong, and that the event was in fact only Alara Block Constructed. He had to scrap the Turbo-Fog deck he’d constructed and put something together at the last minute, and didn’t have enough time to find cards, which left him with three copies of Angelsong in his sideboard that he never found anything to replace (No, really. Look up his decklist on the Wizards site). Apparently Shawn wasn’t alone in his confusion, as a number of other players watching our match chimed in to share their own tales. The moral of the story is that if you see a tournament advertised with a strange format, be sure to contact the tournament organizer to confirm, since the convention staff aren’t going to be able to give you any more information than you can find in the guide already.
Shawn’s Angelsongs couldn’t pull him through, and I managed to advance to the semifinals, despite nearly losing a game in which I activated Ajani’s ultimate and cast Cruel Ultimatum against a single Sprouting Thrinax — I drew all lands off the Ultimatum, and more lands for five straight turns before I finally found another Ultimatum at five life.
My semifinal opponent, Wen Tsun Chuan, was quite the character. He’d been trying to convince everyone in the Top 8 to agree to split, and then asked again in the Top 4. His quarterfinal match took so long, though, that Brian Kowal had already advanced to the Finals on the other side of the bracket, beating Nick Bevcar and Gerry Thompson, so there certainly would be no split before the finals. Wen then said he’d just stab me so I couldn’t make the finals — and continued to repeat this probably a dozen times during our match. He was completely deadpan the entire time, which made his antics all the more amusing. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it, but it certainly helped liven up our late night match.
Wen’s deck was something between Five-Color Control and traditional Cascade. He had Esper Charm and Blightning, but no Traumatic Visions, only one Cruel Ultimatum, and his Cascade chain went all the way up to Enlisted Wurm. I lost the first game to triple Blightning and double Esper Charm (one of the Blightnings brought back by Naya Charm), but managed to win the next two after transforming into a discard plan of my own. When Wen complained that I always hit a discard spell with my cascades, I pointed out to him that after sideboarding they were the only cards in my deck that I could hit. He seems surprised that I’d remove answers to Ajani Vengeant, since it’s such an important card in the matchup, but I point out that I can answer Ajani with Bloodbraid Elf, Blightning, and my own Ajanis, so the value in being guaranteed to hit discard with cascade is much higher than further protection against the Planeswalker.
After I win, Brian Kowal and I agree to split the prizes, but he insists on getting the title for the tournament. He claims that he’d just beaten both Nick and Gerry in the same matchup in the Top 8, but I point out that neither of them played any copies of Celestial Purge, which can make a huge difference stalling the beatdown plan and staying out of Anathamancer range. Either way, since it’s already 2am and he needs rating to qualify for Austin, I agree to concede to him, and the tournament staff brings out the prizes. Much sorting of cards later and I’m on my way back to my hotel more than a little overburdened by Alara Block sets, quite happy I decided to make playing in this tournament a priority at GenCon this year.
Now, I’m sure you’re thinking – “Block is a dead format — what in the world is the point of this article?” Well, two things, I think. One is that it’s only a month until Zendikar is going to come out, and at that point you’re going to wish you’d thought more about Alara Block Constructed, because that’s going to be what makes up most of the Standard format. I’ve heard a lot of rumblings about how the loss of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks is going to mean the death of Five-Color decks, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Look at that decklist up there. Without any of the new dual lands from M10 or whatever other mana fixing will come out of Zendikar, decks that play Bloodbraid Elf and Cruel Ultimatum are already possible! Granted, there’s no more Cryptic Command to really rub in how easy it is to get whatever mana you want, but the world isn’t about to just go back to mono- and two-colored decks. Five-Color Control as we know it may change dramatically, but it’s certainly not gone. I know I could fit a few Baneslayer Angels in that list, myself…
Second, I wanted to just highlight what a great opportunity conventions are for gaming, and GenCon in particular. If you travel for PTQs or $5000 Opens, or even Grands Prix, be sure to take a look at the GenCon schedule next year and consider what a great deal it is compared to your usual trips. If you can play in all three of the Championship events, you can walk away with many thousands of dollars in prizes. If you can’t muster a Vintage or Legacy deck, there’s two PTQs in the span of two days anyway! And if you don’t own a single physical Magic card, you can still play in the Magic Online Live Championships, which is worth a bunch of money and an invitation to Worlds.
Sold yet? I know I’ll be back next year. Hope to see you there.
Until next time…
bmk