Hello!
Whenever people asked me if I were going to Grand Prix tournaments this year, my answer was always no. I didn’t really feel it was worth it — sure, I get money for showing up, but that’s not nearly enough to pay the airfare. As such, it came as a surprise to a lot of people – me included – when I showed up in Dallas. It came as even a bigger surprise when I showed up in Amsterdam. The explanation for that is that I suddenly managed to arrange a Brazil-Amsterdam flight that had a stop in Dallas — and as such I’d be playing two GPs for one plane ticket, which is worth it.
I didn’t finish too badly in Dallas — I finished 18th playing Psychatog, in a format I hadn’t tested much. Here is the list I used, for anyone interested:
Creatures (11)
Lands (21)
Spells (28)
- 3 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Counterspell
- 3 Smother
- 4 Thirst for Knowledge
- 1 Tormod's Crypt
- 2 Chrome Mox
- 1 Engineered Explosives
- 1 Pithing Needle
- 3 Spell Snare
- 3 Counterbalance
- 3 Damnation
Sideboard
If I had to change anything in that list, I would definitely remove a Thirst for Knowledge and add a Land. I’ll not go into any other details because this is not what this article is about, but if you are curious about something in the deck feel free to ask me in the forums.
After Dallas, I flew directly to Amsterdam, so I could take the train to Eindhoven (to the home of the friend who was going to host me for most of the time). On the flight, I met Jelger Wiegersma, who also happened to be going to Eindhoven, which was great because we had some issues with the train and I don’t think I’d ever be able to do everything necessary by myself, with announcements being in Dutch. When I arrived, it turned out they had left my luggage in Chicago. It also turned out that Holland was much colder than I had expected, so I had to wear layers of t-shirts to avoid death until I was able to buy a Jacket and have my luggage delivered. Die, United Airlines.
Before getting to Amsterdam I had done only one Two-Headed Giant draft, with Carlos Romao, in Geneva. We’d won it with a Green/White creature deck and a Black/Blue/Red control deck, featuring multiple Mystical Teachings, a Dralnu, and almost no other creatures. Back then, we killed all of our opponents with Squall Line. It seemed to be a very good configuration (G/W and B/U/r), because Mystical Teachings can get so many great cards in Black and Red, like Haunting Hymn and Sulfurous Blast, and you want the draws in the deck that trades one-for-one (i.e., has the removal).
In Eindhoven, I did two more Drafts, even though there were only three teams and not four. In the first one I played with my friend Roelof, and we got a Green/White and a Blue/Red deck, with a Sliver sub-theme — by sub-theme I mean we had a lot of Slivers, but we weren’t playing any dreadful ones just because they were slivers. We went 1-0-1 with a Sulfurous Blast draw and didn’t have time to play the match again.
The second one I played with Frank Karsten, and the draft was going very smoothly until we opened not one, but two Dragons, with very weird color combinations in them. By the time we had to deckbuild, we were left with the following cards:
Numot (U/R/G)
Oros (B/W/R)
Thrill of the Hunt (W/G)
Stonebrow (R/G)
Mystical Teachlings (U/B)
Strangling Soot (B/R)
The fact that we had one whole mana-fixing card in total, Dreamscape Artist, didn’t help much.
In the end we settled for a R/G/u deck and a B/U/r/w deck, instead of our original configuration (the one we planned during the draft) because that one would leave us with two four-colored decks. We went 1-1.
After about 9 days in Eindhoven, I went to Groningen (which is pronounced rrrrrrrrrrRoninrrren, for those of you who aren’t fluent in Dutch like me) with two other friends and we decided we’d be going out. Now, you probably read a lot of stories about people going out during tournaments, but never from me. That’s for two reasons:
1) I’m usually dead-tired during tournament days. I usually eat little, I usually sleep very little. I have traveled X hours to play a tournament, not to do anything else, and I’m not going to undermine my playing for anything else.
2) I can go out to clubs/discos in my hometown just as well, so there is no need to hurry it if it’s going to harm my prospects in the end.
This time, though, I had been there for almost two weeks and the GP was still a fair distance away, so there was no problems. No problems, that is, except the fact that I was wearing Nike shoes, which is apparently a sign of “trouble-maker,” and therefore forbidden in some Groningen clubs. My friends explained that “some groups who make trouble” wear this kind of clothing (the problem was the brand Nike, not the shoes, mind you — everybody else was wearing shoes), so they just forbid everyone who wears them from entering the clubs to make sure they stop those people. This seems so flawed on so many levels, such as:
Has it never occurred to them that those people can change their shoes?
Let’s just arrest everyone, to make sure we get all the criminals…
Whatever. We ended up going to a better club anyway (I hope it was a better club — at least it allowed me in, even though I was wearing the potentially dangerous Nike shoes).
Getting to Amsterdam sometime later I met my partner Andre Coimbra, and we did one draft with the Portuguese and Spanish players. Our decks ended up being a very good U/R deck and a very bad B/W deck. We did have the potential for some aggression, though, as I had a lot of fliers and he had a lot of early drops, which is something I don’t really like in 2HG but that can give you a win with the new 30 life rule. It might be interesting to note that, in all those drafts, I didn’t open a single Volcanic Awakening.
We went 1-1 in that draft, and we found out that Null Profusion was horrible because you actually needed to play two spells a turn for it to be profitable (otherwise you are getting two (or less) cards yourself but denying your teammate one, so it doesn’t help in any way). It also happens that everybody plays discard in this format, so you get locked quite a lot.
We also got the notice that there would be no team names. While that was great for this tournament, because we didn’t have any, it’s a pity that Willy and I won’t be able to use “Pumba Strikes Back” in San Diego.
Overall I felt pretty confident, but I’m not going to lie to you — I always feel pretty confident, because, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have gone in the first place, would I? There are those times where I feel slightly less than pretty confident, but this wasn’t one of them. I was good, my teammate was good, we were friends, we spoke the same language, we knew what we were doing (kind of) — what could go wrong?
All my confidence vanished instantly when we received our final card pool. I’m going to list you the two decks and the rest of the cards, so you can follow my line of thinking.
Deck #1:
1 Brine Elemental
1 Cancel
1 Crookclaw Transmuter
1 Deep-Sea Kraken
1 Dream Stalker
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Mistform Ultimus
1 Dismal Failure
1 Erratic Mutation
1 Merfolk Thaumaturgist
1 Piracy Charm
1 Veiling Oddity
1 Flamecore Elemental
1 Flowstone Channeler
1 Goblin Skycutter
1 Orcish Cannonade
1 Undying Rage
1 Fury Charm
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
2 Shivan Meteor
2 Stingscourger
9 Mountain
8 Island
Deck #2:
1 Chromatic Star
1 Triskelavus
1 Weatherseed Totem
1 Assassinate
2 Drudge Reavers (!!)
1 Feebleness
1 Phthisis
2 Viscid Lemures
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Cradle to Grave
1 Kor Dirge
1 Gemhide Sliver
1 Molder
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Penumbra Spider
1 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Citanul Woodreaders
1 Essence Warden
2 Giant Dustwasp
1 Wild Pair
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Urza’s Factory
8 Forest
7 Swamp
Remaining Card Pool:
1 Chronatog Totem
1 Jhoira’s Timebug
1 The Rack
1 Castle Raptors
1 Children of Korlis
1 Divine Congregation
1 Flickering Spirit
1 Jedit’s Dragoons
1 Pentarch Ward
1 Sidewinder Sliver
1 Spirit Loop
1 Temporal Isolation
1 Zealot Il-Vec
1 Aven Riftwatcher
1 Poultice Sliver
1 Saltfield Recluse
1 Shade of Trokair
1 Sinew Sliver
1 Moonlace
1 Ophidian Eye
1 Shadow Sliver
1 Tolarian Sentinel
2 Gossamer Phantasm
1 Reality Acid
2 Wishful Thinking
1 Evil eye of Urborg
1 Magus of the Mirror
1 Mindlash Sliver
1 Trespasser Il-Vec
2 Dash Hopes
1 Deadly Grub
1 Spitting Sliver
1 Temporal Extortion
1 Vampiric Link
1 Waning Wurm
1 Barbed Shocker
1 Blazing Blade Askari
1 Ground Rift
1 Tectonic Fiend
1 Two-Headed Sliver
1 Keldon Marauders
1 Lavacore Elemental
1 Needlepeak Spider
1 Shivan Wumpus
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Might of Old Krosa
1 Savage Thallid
1 Craw Giant
1 Groundbreaker
1 Psychotrope Thallid
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Vitaspore Thallid
After a quick look, it became pretty clear that White would be the color we wouldn’t be playing, even though we could splash the Isolation, Dragoons, Raptor, and Recluse. Our first instincts were to pair Green with Red and Blue with Black, because Radha was the only double colored card we have, so there is no reason not to. This way, we’d get Wild Pair with double Stingscourger and Radha herself. If we’d had 10 minutes to build our decks, those would have been our final forties.
But you have a lot more than 10 minutes. So we tried all the possible combinations. Black/Red Blue/Green was quickly discarded, as it made no sense, but Black/Green was looking much better than Green/Red. With Black/Green, there are a couple of cards that get better. All the acceleration gets better, because you have more things to accelerate into (Avatar of Woe, Viscid Lemures). In turn, those Black cards also get better, because you can accelerate into them. Kor Dirge also gets better, because you have more creatures that are likely to get into combat. Wild Pair also gets much better, because you have double Lemures, which can get themselves or… anything else that’s not Avatar of Woe, including Triskelavus. We found out we could play Lemures, stack the ability and -1/-0 it as many times as we wanted, even going negative to get the Triskelavus with a -1/3 Lemures that has a total power and toughness of two. The only price we had to pay for that was not playing Radha, and we thought it was worth it.
Below are some cards we thought about, or some cards we didn’t agree on:
Tolarian Sentinel and Reality Acid
Coimbra wanted to play those; I disagreed vehemently. I wouldn’t play Reality Acid with only one Dream Stalker and one Tolarian Sentinel in normal Draft, let alone in 2HG, where your Sentinel will surely not live if they really want to kill it. The Sentinel isn’t a bad card per se, but the four-drop slot was already too crowded and we didn’t want to crowd it even more. He agreed that the Sentinel should only be played with the Acid, and as I refused to play it, we didn’t play those.
Craw Giant
I wanted to play that — I think it’s okay in 2HG. He didn’t. We ended up not playing it.
Double Drudge Reavers
We both knew this card wasn’t very good, even though he liked it more than I did, but we thought the second one was better than the Trespasser Il-Vec. That might have been our biggest mistake, but I’m absolutely sure it wouldn’t have changed our result in any way. We agreed on playing the second because we wanted to defend while beating with evasion, and the first gets the second with Wild Pair.
Molder over Seal of Primordium
We both felt that the instant speed and life gain was more important than the cheapness.
Might of Old Krosa
We didn’t think we’d end up in a lot of creature combat situation, so we agreed in not playing it as it’s not a very good card in the abstract.
Vampiric Link
The problem with this card in our decks was that you usually want to play it on creatures you can’t block but that also aren’t blocking anytime soon — fliers. We thought we were interested in attacking with fliers ourselves, so it wouldn’t matter if we Spirit Linked theirs because they would simply block with them and this would become Healing Salve. Maybe we should have played it, but we didn’t.
Wistful Thinking
We considered it, but I really didn’t like these, and he didn’t either. I know discard is pretty effective in this format, but this only works when your opponent has exactly two cards in hand, and at the best case it’s a two-for-one. In the worst case it’s unplayable.
We both agreed that the Green/Black deck should draw, and it should also have the two lands and the Chromatic Star, being the deck with the bombs and also the color intensive one (turns out it was always the U/R deck having mana problems).
Round 3
They won the die roll and told us to play. Don’t get me wrong, but not playing in this format is completely absurd. I wish they would remove the “Player B draws a card” clause, because then you’d actually have a choice. This way, you don’t. You lose one card, but you have two players playing first.
Andre went to draw his card for the turn and they stopped him.
“No, you don’t draw, you are playing”
We called the judge and he explained the rule.
“Wow, for real? We played about eight tournaments and we never even heard of it!”
It didn’t matter, though. It seemed they always had the answers to everything we did. Their Player B missed his fourth land, and we Acid-Mossed his single Plains. Then he drew three Plains in a row to play Opal Guardian.
We all played some creatures, and then they played a Vorosh. I had a Cancel in hand, and a Stingscourger, but I didn’t have the second Island. They also had a Clockwork Hydra that was growing rather big (something like 9/9) but that couldn’t attack because we would just strike back for a lot. We played our Triskelavus and passed. They played Molder.
Eventually Andre drew his Gemhide Sliver. That was relevant because I had a Mistform Ultimus in play, and that would give me the second Blue Mana to play the Cancel, as long as they didn’t kill the Sliver. We thought we had to try it right now, and we really thought they wouldn’t notice it. I played the Stingscourger (which is, by the way, much worse in 2HG than in normal draft, and I am already not a fan of him in normal draft) and passed. They replayed the Dragon and I played Cancel, tapping my Ultimus for Blue Mana, and they were clearly surprised. Then they killed the Gemhide Sliver.
It didn’t matter though, as we were heavily flooded on one side, and they just overran us with fliers, including Castle Raptors, the Opal Guardian, Giant Dustwasp, and Mirri the Cursed. We were already dead, but they played Pyrohemia as well, because kicking dead people is funny.
2 – 1
At this point, we were somewhat frustrated. We knew we had played better than them — we spotted a lot of mistakes that could be game-losing (like killing the Gemhide after playing the Dragon). We also felt completely out-opened — their decks were much, much better. Both of them.
Round 4
Round 4 was also frustrating (who am I kidding… it’s always frustrating when you lose). They went turn 1 — Deepwalker, Greenseeker. Turn 2: Ephemeron, Gemhide Sliver. Turn 3 Amrou Scout, Grapeshot my Prodigal Pyromancer. Turn 4 Herd Gnarr, Search for a Rebel. Turn 5 Tromp the Domains with three different land types. Turn 6 Strength in Numbers. Last turn was interesting, because we heard them talking about Strength in Numbers, and I had Erratic Mutation in hand. If they just attack, we lose. If I play Mutation before attacks, he plays Strength in Numbers and we lose. If I play Mutation after they attack, they play Strength in Numbers and we lose… unless I reveal the Kraken. So we went for this play, because it offered roughly 5% chance of not dying, opposed to the 0% in every other course of action. I didn’t reveal the Kraken, and we lost. It’s interesting to note that, even if they had been “talk-bluffing” us and didn’t really have the Strength in Numbers, the play is still correct.
2-2
At that point we knew we had to go 5-0.
Round 5
Round 5 saw our opponents played an early Pyrohemia, Chronozoa, and Teferi, but we trumped them with our superior card pool of Penumbra Spider and Undying Rage. They couldn’t really Pyrohemia its six toughness away, and they couldn’t block it. In the end they couldn’t profitably use the Pyrohemia, because we were at a higher life total, and we won. Yay.
3-2
Round 6
By the beginning of round 6, we were told that they had simply cut two rounds. Of all the things that happened in this GP, I believe this is the most absurd. That’s like telling us we have played the last round (and this round) for no reason! I believe that, if you start the tournament with 9 rounds, you should stick to 9 rounds no matter what it takes. We still played this round, though, with a glimpse of hope. It didn’t matter, because we got completely overwhelmed, despite me suspending a Deep-Sea Kraken turn 3 and it actually coming into play. One thing to note was that they were Spaniards and they kept speaking Spanish between them… and I kept understanding every single thing they were saying. I knew their plays before they made them, but it didn’t really matter. Just a note for people to actually be wary of what language they’re talking, because, you know, your teammate might not be the only one that speaks the language.
There was a turn where they attacked and we made some very nice blocks, so that he had to return his Crovax to his hand and his whole table died, except the Crovax. It ended up going all the way, though, as we never drew an answer. Turns out they had Sudden Spoiling, another creature, and a foil Damnation in hand at the end of the game.
Also of note – this was the first game in the entire tournament where I played a second Island. In all the other games I’ve had Cancel in hand and was unable to play it during the whole game due to never drawing a second Island (except in the third round, where I played it off the Sliver anyway).
3-3 and drop.
If you discount the byes, we went 1-3. By far the worst tournament of my life, if you don’t count the Playstation 2 tournament last year, in which I also went 1-3. What went wrong?
I don’t know.
Many people have asked me that already, and I don’t know the answer. It would be easy to blame the format, or a bad sealed pool, but… I don’t really know. I’m sure we built the decks very well with our card pool — we could have done some things differently, but they would in no way impact the games we played, as we never came close to having a shot in any of them. I’m also fairly sure we played better than our opponents, but, again, it didn’t matter. Kind of depressing, and makes me hate the format to the point that I’m not even considering going to the next GP.
My thoughts on the format:
The deckbuilding is skill intensive, and so is the Draft, but when you actually get to play, the “skill factor” lowers by a significant amount. With two people playing, it’s less likely that people that aren’t so good will make the mistakes they make every game, the mistakes that give the people that are better than them an edge. Many times one of our opponents would forget about Echo, or about pinging us at end of turn, only to be reminded by their teammate. In the end, it seemed to me the cards just trumped the play, and because there are two people attacking you, you can’t recover from a bad start or mana problems. Ultimately, the thing I hate the most is that it’s just one game — to me, that’s bad enough that the format should never be played again. But, again, maybe that’s only because I didn’t do well, and maybe if I do well in San Diego I won’t hate the format as much as I do now. I’m fairly sure I’ll still hate the “one game only” clause.
During the second draft, I was asked to cover the Ruels for the audio coverage. While I think what I did wasn’t very useful for the coverage, it was very useful for me, as Antoine kindly agreed to answer a few questions I had about their draft. It was also very funny to look at Olivier’s face when they were passed packs with absolutely nothing, and I couldn’t help laughing when, by the beginning of the third pack, they got passed a Goblin Skycutter and a Dodecapod and he almost shouted “oh my god, playables!”
The answer from Antoine that I found to be most interesting came when I asked him about their lack of Artifact / Enchantment removal — they had ignored them when they came in the packs early, and they weren’t playing the Krosan Grip they had picked up very late. He explained to me that their decks were so bad that he couldn’t possibly afford to have dead cards, and they would just hope that their opponents didn’t have any game-breaking Enchantments. Makes a lot of sense.
I then watched their game against the “Level 12” team, playing Slivers, and it reminded me of why I don’t think Slivers is good — they got five of their Slivers killed by Grapeshot for six, and they would never be able to beat any form of mass removal. I believe Slivers are viable, but not as an all-in plan — you shouldn’t play bad cards just because they are Slivers because, if the important ones die, your deck becomes too underpowered.
After the tournament, we did two Drafts, and in four packs I opened three Volcanic Awakenings. Remember that I told you I had opened none during four 2HG Drafts (where you open four packs of Time Spiral)? Right. Now I get them all, when they don’t matter. By the way, I’d be glad if someone *cough* Tiago *cough* could tell me whether we won or lost the second draft, because I had to leave before it ended.
Well, I think that’s all I have to say about Amsterdam. I realize this is quite shorter than my usual articles, but the tournament was also much shorter than I’m used to, so there was a lot less to write about. I didn’t even get to Draft, so there isn’t much I can say about it. The fact that it took me 60 (sixty) hours to get home, due to two of my flights being cancelled, also means I can’t really extend this article as much as I would like and still get it to Craig in a timely manner, but I’ll be pretty happy to answer any questions anyone has in the forums.
I hope you enjoyed it, and see you in Yokohama!