Here I am again with another tournament report from a tournament that was, for me, not very successful. You know, it’s a shame that I decide to write reports for Amsterdam and Yokohama but not for Geneva and Dallas, where I had a respectable result, but I don’t really know how well I’m going to do before I pick the slot to write the report, so…
I was pretty excited by the prospect of a Block Pro Tour. I like Block Constructed by nature, and this block is no different. I think there were enough deck possibilities going in, even with a small card pool, and it looked challenging. I also love it when the Pro Tour is the first tournament with the new set — it had been like that in Hawaii and Charleston, and I posted good results in both (20th and 2nd). What I didn’t realize was that there was a big difference between “one month after the set is released” and “two months after the set is released.” That difference was Magic Online.
Before the set was even online, I had probably already built a copy of every single deck in the Pro Tour. I can honestly say that nothing I saw there surprised me. I figured the deck to beat would be U/B — so I decided I wouldn’t play anything that was less than 50% against it (which included the G/R decks from the PT Top 8). Unfortunately, there weren’t many decks that could claim that record without having an abysmal matchup against everything else. It quickly became apparent that “everything else” was usually White Weenie. No deck beats U/B and WW at the same time, because they are absolute spectrums — U/B tries to achieve total control, and WW tries to achieve… total beatdown?
In fact, it had been a lot of time since I had seen a deck that achieved total control. The last I can remember is Wake, which was, without a doubt, the best deck of its time. Control decks of today do not control the game — they control the board and then hope to play a big creature before their control slips away. There is the U/B Teferi Standard deck of course, but this one, in my opinion, can’t even control the board. In Block, it can.
With that in mind, I saw no reason to play anything other than U/B myself. That is until I started losing to White Weenie… and realizing that my “total control” depended on a lot more than drawing a normal combination of cards — I needed to draw a specifically good combination of cards. Against most White Weenie draws, you need more than one Damnation. If you don’t draw a single, you won’t win. If you do, you may lose anyway… because their deck is made to beat a single Damnation.
Then I decided I’d run everything against White Weenie, as I didn’t want to play a deck that lost to it. To my surprise, it kept crushing everything I threw at it. I hate when that happens — I have a nice idea and it can’t beat WW. I have another nice idea and it can’t beat WW. Apparently, the only thing that could beat White Weenie was a deck that really aimed to beat it, and it would then suffer from the other matchups. As I know now, there are only two decks that have a good matchup against WW — Mono Red and B/R/u, and even those you can beat. So, I did what I had done in Paris — if you can’t beat them, join them.
I tested a lot with White Weenie. I could overcome most of the hate, because people didn’t know exactly how to hate. People underestimated White Weenie. Then, once the set became legal in Magic Online, decks evolved and people eventually arrived to the conclusion we had arrived before — White Weenie, in that particular metagame, was just the best deck.
That’s where I made my biggest mistake. I thought that was a MTGO fluke. I thought people wouldn’t play White Weenie much — it’s not a deck most people (including me) are comfortable in playing, because it looks too vulnerable and susceptible to whatever thrown at it. WW was like that, but not as much as other people expected – but I expected them not to know that. I figured that if people wouldn’t play WW, they wouldn’t put a lot of people into playing WW either. They wouldn’t tune their decks to beat WW, they wouldn’t mind losing to WW — their target, like mine, would be U/B.
I was wrong. But not by much.
People, in fact, didn’t play WW. But apparently they thought everybody else would. They were also wrong — and for that reason most of them didn’t do very well…
But they did well enough to beat me.
I’d like to take a moment to talk about Mono Red. To me, there were two clear-water divisors on WW and Mono Red — Mono Red had a good matchup against WW, and WW had a better matchup than Mono Red against everything else. That was specially true against Green/Red, whose matchup against Mono Red is almost as good as its matchup against WW is bad. To me, it was a clear choice.
After settled on White Weenie, we tried most cards in the format. Our biggest discords were over Duskrider Peregrine (which ended up not being good), Cloudchaser Kestrel (which went to the maindeck), Icatian Javelineers, Mana Tithe, and Fortify. Mana Tithe was the biggest problem, as apparently I was the only person in the world to like it. I thought the deck was too vulnerable without it — you needed it to compete. I also thought it was a much better one-drop than Javelineers, whose only function in the deck seemed to be to die to Sulfur Elemental and Damnation while not being big enough to apply enough pressure on its own. Mana Tithe can be a dead card sometimes, sure… but so can Griffin Guide. Mana Tithe is at its best on the play versus Control and on the draw versus Aggro, so you counter their two-drop. Many people argued that Mana Tithe is a good spell to not have in your deck, because people will play around it anyway — but with such bad manabases, most of the time they just can’t. Besides, if no one was running Mana Tithe besides me (and I ended up convincing the other four Brazilians), why would people play around it?
This is the list I ended up playing:
Creatures (29)
- 4 Soltari Priest
- 4 Benalish Cavalry
- 2 Cloudchaser Kestrel
- 4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
- 4 Serra Avenger
- 4 Calciderm
- 4 Shade of Trokair
- 3 Stonecloaker
Lands (23)
Spells (8)
The singleton Fortify was there because we didn’t want more situational cards that would be bad if we had no creatures — like Guide, Stonecloaker, and Mana Tithe — but we wanted Fortify and the ability to win random games. There was the added bonus of your opponent playing around Fortify after he had seen the single copy. There were many moments during the tournament where I wished I drew a Fortify to win the game instantly, though, so it should be a two-of.
The sideboard seems very random, like we couldn’t decide which was better between Magus and Paladin… but it’s not. They are both good against the same decks, generally — WW, Wild Pair, and Slivers. Against those, Paladin is better — but it also costs five, and we also boarded the Magus in against R/G and Mono Red. The single Disenchant was because we wanted another Enchantment removal option in the board, and as it’s in the board, you won’t usually risk it being a dead card, so there is no need to play Kestrel over it. It gains over Kestrel because it surprises Griffin Guide, Isolation, takes out Serrated Arrows, and can be played on a fresh-cast Wild Pair at end of turn.
With the deck and list in mind, we departed for Yokohama… and let me tell you, it wasn’t pleasant. It took me two hours to fly from my city to Rio de Janeiro, then another nine to Miami, then another three to Dallas, then about twelve to Narita. That’s 26 hours flying, not counting the time in the multiple airports in between. After that, we had to take a one and a half hour train from Narita to Yokohama. And that’s not counting the TWELVE hours time difference. Really, anyone from Brazil who goes to a tournament in Japan should automatically be selected as Road Warrior.
We arrived at the tournament site and got to eat some mediocre Japanese food, but I ate a lot anyway because I was hungry and I like eating. Most other Brazilians didn’t share my enthusiasm for the soup and decided they’d go to McDonalds later, but due to the time difference, and most people’s inability to sleep well on the plane, we were all dead-tired by 7pm. We forced ourselves to stay awake until around nine, when we all collapsed only to wake up at… 5am. I hate Japan. Okay, not really — I just hate the time difference… and the fact that nobody understands me. When I was in the hotel lobby, for instance, I was looking for the Restroom and had the following dialogue with the reception guy:
“Hi, can you tell me where the restroom is?”
“???”
”Hmm… bathroom?”
*points to breakfast room*
“No, not that… toilet?”
*gives me towels*
You get what I mean.
Anyway, onto the tournament:
Round 1 I was paired against Mono Red. First game, he made turn 1 Magus of the Scroll, turn 2 Blood Knight. Some turns later he had a second Knight and a Sulfur Elemental. I topdecked a Griffin Guide that would likely have won me the game on a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, but he drew another Sulfur Elemental and could then kill my Nimbus next turn with the Magus of the Scroll, which he wouldn’t have been able to do if it was, for instance, a Fiery Temper.
I bring in Sunlance, one Isolation, the Passages, and Magus of the Disk. Because I’m on the play, out go the Tithes, the Kestrels, Fortify, and Stonecloakers, because they are too slow for that match. You’ll notice that Tithe usually goes out, but it’s not because it’s a bad card — it’s because you cannot take anything else from the deck. You rarely add creatures, and never cheap creatures, so you cannot take them out — that would disrupt the core of the deck too much. Taking Griffin Guide out is also out of question, so you have to remove Tithes, even though you’d probably side out anything you had in place of the Tithes as well (Javelineers against most decks, for example).
I open my hand of Soltari Priest, Griffin Guide, Sunlance, Cavalry and three lands, and I think I have already won. Then he makes Gemstone Caverns, turn 1 Blood Knight, turn 2 Blood Knight, t3 Sulfur Elemental, turn 4 burn my Cavalry, turn 5 Dead / Gone my Serra Avenger. He wins at three life.
0-1
In round 2 I faced a very skilled opponent in the mirror match. I won game 1 due to Shade advantage (Shade is, really, the card that breaks the mirror), but game 2 was a little trickier. He had a better board position, but nothing threatening — two Javelineers, for instance. I had Magus of the Disk and Paladin, but only four Mana, and I decide I have enough room to allow myself to topdeck an extra land to play around Mana Tithe as the Magus is surely going to win me the game. Two turns later I draw the land, but he has double Tithe. I play the Paladin next and the game is still looking good for me. He attacks me with Nimbus and the two Javelineers, and I take it — he has the Fortify to put me on five. During this attack, I actually misread my life total — I thought I’d end up a higher life total… I think I was looking at his score instead. I wouldn’t have blocked anyway, though, so it didn’t matter. Then we get in the situation where many people would have lost the game, but he won. I played a sixth land and a Shade, leaving WW open to use the Paladin or cast the Mana Tithe in my hand. His board was the two Javelineers, an Isolated Priest, an Isolated Serra Avenger, and a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, so there wasn’t much for me to kill anyway. Then he attacked with the two Isolated guys. I am forced to use the Paladin to kill the Avenger, because I cannot risk dying to Stonecloaker or Disenchant (he would deal me three plus the two Javelineers) in such a good board position. It turned out he didn’t have any of those, but he was then able to slip a Serrated Arrows past my Mana Tithe, and my Paladin was overwhelmed by Arrows and Javelins just like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. I flooded a bit after that, and he managed to strike me for the win.
Game 3 I mulliganed a one-land hand (I very rarely keep a one-land hand) into another one-lander — Plains, Shade, Serra Avenger, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Griffin Guide, and another card I don’t remember but that was good in the context (i.e. no Calciderm or Stonecloaker — it was probably a Temporal Isolation). This is the kind of hand that doesn’t win unless I draw a second land, but it doesn’t really need to be immediate, and after I do draw the second I don’t need to draw the third or the fourth. If I was on seven cards, I’d have mulliganed it, but as I was on six and the hand was very good, I kept. Serves me right — I never drew a second Land, despite him not applying much pressure.
0-2
Our sideboard strategy for the mirror included taking out the Soltari Priests, to leave their Javelineers useless, and because we were bringing in Isolations — I’ve seen many people attacking their Priests into an Isolated Serra Avenger, and I’ve seen even more people not blocking — and taking out some Calciderms, depending on whether we were on the play or on the draw. On the play, Mana Tithe is bad, but on the draw I like it more than Fortify, and Calciderms hit the bench because you are bringing in the “control plan”.
Round 3 was yet another mirror, and even though my opponent was also very nice, he wasn’t as skilled as my previous two. That is not to say he was bad or anything like that, but that he made some questionable plays during the course of the game. Maybe he was just nervous. He made some bad attacks, like running his Shade with six Plains into my Calciderm plus Serra Avenger and being utterly surprised when I blocked, like he hadn’t even considered the possibility. There were also some times where he should have attacked but didn’t. I also played well, and managed to stick a lot of damage representing a Stonecloaker I never had all three games. Once he put me on it for the first time, he put me on it for the rest of the game and therefore never blocked. My sideboard plan was also better, in my opinion, because he had Aven Riftwatchers that don’t really do anything in the mirror — the mirror is rarely ever a race, and this is the only situation in which this card is good. Besides, any Serra Avenger turns it into an expensive Sacred Nectar (okay, it’s more like seven life than four, because it blocks the Avenger once). That didn’t matter at all, because he always out-Shaded (and we all know already that Shade is the card that breaks the mirror, right?) and out-Serra-Avengered me. Overall, this was pretty frustrating, as I really felt I deserved to win. But, again, I’ve won many matches that my opponent probably deserved to win more than me, so I guess I can’t complain. At least my opponent was very nice.
0-3
So I was 0-3. I didn’t have much faith in the deck by then (who would, at 0-3?), but again, I had lost to two mirrors and a Mono Red with close to the perfect draw both games, so how could that be a testimony to the deck’s power? I felt like I could pull it off, though. Many times in Pro Tours (okay, not that many because I haven’t really played that many Pro Tours) I had been on the verge of the elimination as soon as round 3 (thanks to 1-2 drafts), and I had never failed to money finish a Pro Tour before.
Someone accurately pointed out that, in those occasions, I would be playing with another deck… and this time I had to stick with my 0-3 deck.
I told them to shut up and went for round 4.
My opponent was playing what is possibly the best matchup for me, Red/Green. Game 1 I slaughtered him, like I should. Game 2 my draw was very bad, and a Sulfur Elemental in response to my Griffin Guide on the Priest won the game for him (as well as the turn 5 and 6 Spectral Forces and turns 7 and 8 Hellkites, or something like that). Usually, when on the draw I’ll attack first with the Priest before playing Guide, so not to waste it in case they have Elemental, but I didn’t actually have another creature (my hand was Isolations and Honorable Passage) so I felt I should risk it.
Game 3 I draw a hand of four lands, Shade, Nimbus and Sunlance. I drew lands in my first five or so draws. When my Shade came into play, by turn 4, I attacked and he made one of the most inexplicable plays I’ve ever seen — he played Sulfur Elemental before damage and didn’t block with it. Later on he told me he just got confused. That allowed me to Sunlance the Elemental before his second came into play, as well as dealing him two additional damage, and eventually the only thing between me and my first win of the tournament was his Fortune Thief. He didn’t have any pressure, so I had a lot of time to draw Sunlance or Magus, but never did. He eventually played another Fortune Thief, and an Akroma. I had an Honorable Passage in hand, which gave me two turns to draw either a Magus on the first turn or a Sunlance in both of them.
My first draw was a Sunlance.
My second draw was… another Sunlance!
I’m so good at this game.
1-3
I’m 1-3. Yay.
Round 5 I play against Kamiel, the only known pro I faced the whole tournament, and one whom I consider to be amongst the best players in the world. He was playing my bad matchup, B/R/u. First game I had two Shades and he had two Chroniclers, but I was flooded and he couldn’t stop them and eventually had to chump block. He died without having seen a Damnation or Void.
Game 2 I start with my one Sacred Mesa in hand, and it quickly becomes apparent that it’s going to be my only out this game. He quickly kills everything I have and I drop Mesa with five lands in play. I draw five lands in a row and after he plays what looked like three Damnations, three Tendrils, two Voids, two Strangling Soots and five Sudden Deaths he loses without drawing one of his four Sulfur Elementals.
2-3
Climbing up!
Round 6 I played against Blink Riders. Game 1 his Gemstone Mines killed him. His first spell was a Mangara, and his second spell was a Saltblast on my land. Game 1 I Mana Tithe his Lens, but he never stops drawing Mana. He has Sulfur Elemental and two Shapeshifters, and I have a Guided Serra Avenger and a non-Guided copy. I have two more Guides in hand, and six mana.
If I split the Guides, he just uses one Shapeshifter to get his second Elemental and one to get a 5/1 Serra Avenger, blocks my 9/5 Serra Avenger with it, keeps his two Elementals and kills my two tokens, to then block my next Avenger a turn later, so I decide to Guide up the already Guided one, making it 10/8. I attack with both and he is forced to double block the big one with his two 4/2 Serra Shapeshifters. The three creatures die and I get three 3/1 Griffins… but he has a third Shapeshifter to kill all of them and that is game.
Game 3 he takes a long time to draw a third land, and WW really punishes this kind of draw.
3-3!
Round 7 I really think there is some unseen force rooting for me, because my opponent arrives and says he lost his deck. He eventually finds it though (how lucky!), and it turns out he is playing Mono Red splash Blue (so not Mono Red). I win a normal game 1 and he wins a normal game 2, when his Blood Knight plus about 7 removal spells go all the way and his Arrows + double Temper work to kill my Magus of the Disk plus Honorable Passage.
Game 3 I open with Shade, and on turn 3 I draw and play a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, with a Guide in hand. He plays his third land and passes with RRU up.
Shade comes into play, I draw and I have two options — I can Guide the Nimbus or play the Calciderm in my hand. I knew some versions of U/R played Snapback (I’m not sure if his did), and he could very well be playing Dead / Gone, both of which make the Guide play worse. The only situation in which the Calciderm play loses is if he has double Sulfur Elemental and I don’t draw anything to Guide up after that — I go for the Calciderm play, which I still think to be correct. He has the two Sulfur Elementals, and trades one for my Calciderm. After that I draw Griffin Guide number two and Temporal Isolation, or something like that, and lose without being able to Guide anything up.
So that was that. I was done. At least I was playing for an extra pro point.
After sitting and thinking, I decided to play because my tiebreakers were awful (44.4!) and I’d likely finish around 202nd if anyone else decided to draw. He mulliganed to five on the play, and my hand was good. Then he proceeds to make turn 3 Sulfur Elemental, turn 4 Sulfur Elemental.
By now, the tournament is starting to look like a Vanguard match, with everybody playing the Sulfur Elemental Avatar.
That start kills every single card in my hand, and I lose.
Game two he has Sulfur Elemental for my two Priests (…) but I win when I Passage a Disintegrate.
Game 3 my hand is also pretty good, but he has Fortune Thief and I never see a Sunlance or Magus of the Disk, so I lose.
3-5
Nice.
Result.
(Turns out I’d have finished 201st with a draw).
So, Yokohama was by far the worst Pro Tour result of my life. It was also very frustrating, because I believed the deck to be good — and I still do! One Sulfur Elemental doesn’t really harm it, but two is usually game — and it seemed everybody always had two. I think the metagame went too far with its WW hate — more than anyone would have expected. I don’t think that means WW is a bad deck, and I’m sure it’ll be better at PTQs and the GP than it was at the Pro Tour — I don’t expect to see more Sulfur Elementals than Plains in the Top 50 of those.
If you take the Top 8 decks, for instance, the only decks with a good matchup against WW are Saito’s and Levy’s. All the G/R decks are good matchups, even the one with Void, and the U/Bs aren’t bad either. Heezy’s deck is probably the best against WW, due to the Teferi’s Moat, but even then WW has Serra Avenger, Kestrels, Stonecloaker and Griffin Guide. Sometimes, you just play Guide turn 3 and win. The Pickles deck from the finals apparently has a very bad matchup against White Weenie, playing no Tendrils and no Sudden Death. It has no answers to a Shade of Trokair except Pickle Comboing you, or playing Damnation, and I don’t see how it would beat a turn 3 Griffin Guide.
Do I recommend WW for you to play PTQs / GP? No, I don’t. But I still don’t recommend against it. If you feel comfortable with the deck, don’t let the absurd amount of hate thrown at it in the PT scare you more than it should. You will find hate, of course — but not as much as I and the other WW players found at the PT. You won’t see many game 1 Sulfur Elementals from G/R decks, for instance, and nobody is going to play a game 1 Fortune Thief versus you.
If I really had to choose anything now, it would probably be U/B. It does remind me of Wake, especially because all the U/B decks in the Top 8 only lost to themselves. It’s not easy to hate and no matchups are dreadful… you just need to know how to play the mirror. Regarding the version of U/B… well, that’s up to you. I’m not playing Strasbourg so I’m done with Block Constructed without Future Sight.
Bonus Section: Future Sight and the Prerelease!
Before going to Japan, I was quite angry that they had put my favorite tournament (and one of the few most Pro players are even allowed to play) – the Prerelease – on the same day as the Pro Tour. That is really stupid.
The anger vanished when I went 3-5 and was then able to play the Prerelease on Saturday.
I opened a very solid pool, and when BDM asked me who I thought was going to win I said I would. Well, I won — at least as much as anyone can win a “5-0 get a box” Prerelease. Three people went 5-0, but I was the only one of them to not lose a single game, so I consider myself the moral victor!
Even though my deck was ridiculously good, I still think there is something to be discussed in the building, as there was another color that was also very good. I’d like to talk a bit about some Future Sight cards, as I still have a lot of room left in my article schedule as I only played eight rounds at the PT.
Here are the relevant cards in the pool I opened:
Black
Nothing
White
1 Griffin Guide
1 Sacred Mesa
Okay, so those two colors weren’t that bad, but they paled in comparison to the other three and they were quickly discarded. I’m going to focus on what matters.
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Sliver Legion
Green
2 Edge of Autumn
2 Kavu Primarch
3 Llanowar Empath
1 Durkwood Baloth
1 Scarwood Treefolk
1 Ashcoat Bears
1 Sporoloth Ancient
1 Spellwilde Ouphe
1 Wrap in Vigor
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Llanowar Reborn
Blue
2 Logic Knot
1 Eternity Snare
1 Think Twice
1 Walk the Aeons
1 Temporal Eddy
1 Fathom Seer
1 Whip-Spined Drake
2 Foresee
1 Maelstrom Djinn
1 Infiltrator Il-Kor
1 Spin Into Myth
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Ancestral Visions
1 Ixidron
Red
1 Orcish Cannonade
1 Ironclaw Buzzardiers
2 Emberwilde Augur
2 Fomori Nomad
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Undying Rage
1 Disintegrate
1 Lightning Axe
1 Fortune Thief (Die! Die!)
1 Sudden Shock
1 Keldon Megaliths
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Sparkspitter
1 Aetherflame Wall
1 Storm Entity
1 Grinning Ignus
1 Rift Elemental
At first, my intention was to build Green/Red splash Blue for Maelstrom Djinn off the two Farseeks and the Lens, but then I realized that the Blue cards were simply better than the Green cards — I had two Foresees to three Empaths, and as much as I love Kavu Primarch (I usually play 3/3s for five – even though they are much worse in this format than in others – so what’s to say about a 3/3 for four with two relevant and synergic abilities), Blue seemed just better. I also had more card drawing to find any specific card I was looking for, such as Disintegrate or Fortune Thief. Something I didn’t really consider was U/G, because the Red cards seemed just better, but I could have splashed the Disintegrate / Axe / Shock. That would cluster the four-mana slot too much though, and even though I had three accelerators in that combination I preferred to just play the good cards in the two colors because the deck was good enough. I ended up with this:
1 Fathom Seer
1 Whip-Spined Drake
2 Foresee
1 Maelstrom Djinn
1 Infiltrator Il-Kor
1 Spin Into Myth
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Ancestral Visions
1 Ixidron
1 Orcish Cannonade
1 Ironclaw Buzzardiers
2 Emberwilde Augur
2 Fomori Nomad
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Undying Rage
1 Disintegrate
1 Lightning Axe
1 Fortune Thief (Die! Die!)
1 Sudden Shock
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Keldon Megaliths
8 Mountain
8 Island
The Keldon Megaliths was actually a doubtful card. I’d blindly play it in any deck, but this seems to be the deck in which it’s at its worse. I have Ancestral Visions, two Foresees and Fathom seer — it didn’t look like I was going to be Hellbented much (and I never really was), but I played it anyway… but the more I think about it, the more I should just play it anyway regardless of the deck.
My biggest cuts were the Think Twice and the Walk the Aeons. As much as I like Think Twice, the other four draw spells in the deck are already better, and I preferred playing the 2/1 for two. I simply couldn’t find room for Walk the Aeons.
Round 1 sees me paired against a Japanese player. That means all his cards were in Japanese, but I didn’t have trouble with any of them because the only card from Future Sight he played was the 2R two-damage / four-damage on upkeep Aura [Fatal Attraction — Craig], and I already knew that one. He had slow starts both games and I beat him quite quickly. During our game, another non-Japanese guy arrives late for his game against a Japanese opponent and gets a warning for tardiness.
My opponent signs the slip, and I notice that his opponent’s name isn’t mine. I then look for the next table slip and see that I got a warning for tardiness. At the moment, I thought the slips were simply misplaced, and we called the judge to fix it. It turned out that we were playing each other’s opponents. I quickly look at my table number — 24. It says 24 on the slip and on the pairings — I’m seated correctly, and so is the other non-Japanese player. The judge then announces that, as all four players are responsible for that, he is going to match loss the four of us.
“But… I have already played! And how was I supposed to know that he was not my opponent?”
“Both players are responsible.”
“My opponent’s name is Japanese, he is Japanese! What more can I possibly do, ask every opponent for their ID card to make sure they are sitting correctly?”
“Match loss for all four, that is my final ruling”
We then called another judge who managed to translate things. At that moment, it became pretty clear that no one really had a clue about what was going on. Then, someone accurately pointed out that, even though my table number was 24, their table number was also 24. The table number should have been “laid down”, because it said 24 on both sides, but it was standing, so it was the number that I saw and the place where I sat. The other guy said he hadn’t checked anything, and had just sat in the first empty seat he had seen around there because he had been late. So it was not my opponent’s fault after all — he was in the right place. I was the guy sitting wrongly, though I don’t think I was really to blame because I just sat at wherever the number was. The judges thought the same thing, and apologized saying it was their fault for messing up the table numbers. We ended up getting a warning and just playing whoever we were playing before, as it was round 1 and it didn’t impact anything, so I kept my 2-0 win.
While talking to some judges about it, some mentioned that I should have looked at my opponent’s name (foreign), memorized it, gotten to my opponent and written it down (because I can’t pronounce it correctly), to check if it was really him. This may be the ruling, but it’s damn well stupid. I mean, I usually get to my opponent, introduce myself and they do the same — but if it’s a foreign name that I cannot pronounce and don’t remember from the pairings, I hardly bother to double check and I’m sure most people don’t either.
The remaining four matches went without trouble, and I was never really in danger of losing any game, even though I was in the wrong end of the new Hammer of Bogardan once and I can say it’s pretty good [Thunderblade Charge… looks like a winner to me too — Craig]. In the last game of the tournament, my opponent had five evasion creatures to my three creatures, and I was at six life. He had no cards in hand and I had around five, including an Ixidron that I would have played to even the board. Then I drew Fortune Thief — and I played that instead of the Ixidron. He drew, discarded his card to Trespasser Il-Vec and attacked — and I flipped Fortune Thief to kill him with a counterattack. It wouldn’t really have mattered because I believe I had the game firmly under control (unless he topdecked some rare bomb), but it felt good to kill someone with Fortune Thief.
During deck construction, Brian David Marshal went around asking people what they would play in their Pro Tour decks if they could. At first, I couldn’t really point anything out, as my White was pretty dreadful, but now I remember one card I would definitely play — the G/W Dual Land [Horizon Canopy — Craig].
The G/W Dual Land is fantastic for most aggro strategies, and it’s even better for this block White Weenie. With White Weenie, you want to play a lot of lands to power up Shade, to be able to reliably play Calciderm and to make sure cards like Stonecloaker are not a liability. It also helps in case you run Sacred Mesa, and with your mirror Sideboard plan of Paladins. The Dual Land (that sacrifices to draw a card) makes sure you can play the amount of lands you want without being that susceptible to manaflood, and I think it’ll become a staple in most aggro decks of those colors, even if they only run one. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’d always run it in Gruul, for example, but I don’t see a reason not to run it in White Weenie and Mono Green (I do see a reason for not running Mono Green at all, though). It’s also perfect for Zoo, where you play Brushland but don’t really have anything to use the colorless mana at, so you end up always damaging yourself anyway, and you can dig for burn with it.
Speaking of the Future Sight lands, I believe all of them have a place in Constructed, except the Dredge and the Dryad ones. Even the Morph one seems good and playable to me.
I agree with Patrick Chapin that Graven Cairns is, mechanically, the strongest. If all the Dual Lands used the Black/Red mechanic, this would be the best. However, it’s probably not the best of the five we have because the color combination is not very good… but it’s still a very good card.
The U/B one seems really good to me. Jeroen Remie pointed out in a forum reply that you need instant speed Black nowadays (for Soot, Sudden Death and Teachings, I suppose), and so this isn’t as good as most people think, but I ask you, don’t you run Islands in your deck even though they don’t provide instant speed Black? This is almost always better than a basic Island. The only situations where this fails and Island wins is when you need it to produce Blue the turn it came into play — if you want to go land, Ancestral Visions, for example — or when your opponent has Detritivore (which will be a big card when those lands become legal). I think it will definitely see play.
I have mixed feelings about the U/W land, Nimbus Maze. It is obviously good, but how good? I don’t know. Better than Adarkar Wastes? Probably… but only in two colors.
The G/R land, Grove of the Burnwillows, one is obviously deck dependant. It is great in control and not so great in aggro.
I haven’t really played enough with Future Sight yet to give you a better idea about what’s good in Limited, except the obvious things like Red is the best color by a mile. So I’ll round off with a cheery goodbye!
I hope you enjoyed my article, and see you in Stockholm! I predict I’ll finish… thirteenth!
Paulo Vitor
[Okay, so that last line was mine… – Craig, amused.]