From The Lab - How to Qualify for San Diego

Hmm, so I get to talk about Limited, and Two-Headed Giant, again.

No, don’t run off. Please.

I didn’t plan to talk about Two-Headed Giant this weekend. In fact, I was about to talk about an interesting game situation from Amsterdam, but then something happened last weekend that made me change my mind.

Yep, I qualified. It was a bit accidental, if the truth be told, but it does lend a bit more weight to the title.

How to qualify for San Diego… by someone who has.

Nice.

With the qualifying season for San Diego about to start in earnest, I’m hoping this will be of interest to most of you out there. It also features possibly one of the sickest turns I’ve ever seen in a Limited Magic game.

Hold on Jones. How is this news? You’re a level 4 pro. Of course you’re qualified for San Diego. You’re qualified for all the Pro Tours.

Well no, and yes. Technically no, as you need a combined total of five pro levels to qualify for San Diego, but realistically yes, as all I need to do is find someone with at least one pro point from last year who I willing to go (and put up with me). In this case, the important part is the technically no, as it means I’m allowed to play in the PTQs.

Despite being eligible, it was touch and go whether I’d be able to go to the Bradford PTQ. For starters I didn’t have a partner. My usual partner, Keith Spragg, actually has a real life and was away doing girlfriendy type things that weekend. My other partner, or rather the person I was going to team up with if everything went tits up and we had to qualify on pro levels, Craig Stevenson, already had a prior agreement to form another monstrous Two-Headed Craig with fellow Team Leeds player Craig Smith. [Craig Smith and I begged Craig Jones to join our three-man team for the Team Constructed season last year… How could we lose with Triple Craig Action? Sadly, he declined. So our two-Craig team beat his one-Craig team in a PTQ, and it serves him right. — Craig Stevenson.]

Then in Amsterdam Nick and Fizz suggested I team up with Fizz. Normally they both actually run the Bradford tournaments, but on this occasion Nick (level 3 judge and supreme overlord of all judging matters in the UK) was bringing in someone else to gain experience at head judging. This meant Fizz was free to play if she wanted.

After playing Two-Headed Giant for the past four weekends, including the wretched Grand Prix in Amsterdam, I was starting to feel a little burnt out, but it did sound like it might be fun. Sure, I’d have an opportunity to win a flight, but more importantly I could see how far I could push Nick before he’d DQ the team containing his girlfriend. Hyuk hyuk.

I was kind of hoping for the turnout to be low and mainly local teams. It was still quite low at 16 teams (That’s actually not bad for a UK Team PTQ, sad to say), but amongst them were some very good teams including a couple that had come all the way down from Scotland.

Anyway, here was the pool we got to fight with:

2HG PTQ Sealed Deck Cardpool

Craig Jones

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (65)

Lands (6)

Fairly average was my thought. Some of the rares aren’t bad, but not much in the dragon-shaped bomb class unless you count Dust Elemental.

Deck construction in Two-Headed Giant is always an interesting exercise in mental gymnastics. I follow a relatively simple set of rules, the most important of which is:

“No bomb left on the bench.”

As far as I can see, the main change the drop to 30 life has made is to give absolutely no chance for teams that hit mana problems. The format is still slow and is still all about bombs. So, to give yourself the best chance you want to be making sure all of your bombs find a home. Your main objective for Two-Headed Sealed deck is to wring absolutely every last drop of power from your sealed pool.

Your color considerations should be based upon being able to play the powerful gold cards and putting together the cards with the greatest synergy. With this pool I thought that might be Black and White to take advantage of the three rebel searchers, but that didn’t look right as it broke too many other color requirements (Fiery Justice, various flashback costs).

In the end we built these two decks.

2HG PTQ Deck A

Craig Jones

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (15)

Lands (18)

Spells (7)

2HG PTQ Deck B

Faieza Saleem

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (12)

Lands (18)

Spells (10)

Why build a two-color deck and a three-color deck when you can have a three-color deck and a four-color deck instead?

This is something I like doing a lot in this format. I think too many people take the easy option of making one deck out of two colors and the other out of three. This just leaves your decks lop-sided with one struggling for playables while another leaves too many good cards in the board.

It is not so much about finding which colors go best together as which cards go better with other cards.

Looking at my deck list you’ll see that I’m already splashing red for Fiery Justice. It also makes sense for me to take the Stingscourger as well. Fizz might have the Red deck, but my deck is better set up to abuse the Goblin O’War. I also have enough fixing to be able to splash an Island for Moat as well.

I also want Blue in Fizz’s deck. Mystical Teachings is just so powerful with that many targets, and because her deck has less fixing she also gets enough Islands to enable the deck to run Ephemeron and Aeon Chronicler.

Unfortunately there is a downside. Initially her deck had Tendrils of Corruption, but late in deck construction I realised her deck needed to be heavier on the Mountains. With only six Swamps in the deck it’s not worth running Tendrils.

I suppose we could have just played Black/Red and moved all the Blue cards into the other deck. Plenty of people will have their own opinions and I don’t have the faintest idea which is the absolute correct one. Feel free to slug it out in the forums. I’ll just sit here fanning myself with my nice blue envelope (if it actually exists).

Okay, that’s enough smugness.

Before I move on I should point out there may be a few errors in both the pool and deck lists. I’ve had to reconstruct them after the cards were all thrown together. Some other commons might have got mixed in as well. For instance I’m not sure whether the two Synchronous Sliver were present.

There might have been something else present instead of the Halberdier, and I may have played one less land.

Oh yes, the land. Both decks have 18 land. I don’t mess around in this format. As I’ve already said, the drop to 30 life makes it virtually impossible to win if one of you is mana-screwed. And when you’re playing best of one you definitely don’t want to ever get mana-screwed. Don’t forget as well that Two-Headed Giant is a slower format. You’re likely to be playing slower, more powerful cards and guess what, they cost more mana.

Overall I thought our decks were fairly average to mediocre. Virtually all of the other decks I’ve opened have been more powerful. I didn’t really rate our chances very highly especially after walking around and seeing double Pyrohemia monstrosities, dragons, and Jedits all over the place.

I felt our best routes to victory was for me to put down a bunch of critters and Tromp, or to build up a reasonable storm count and steal games with Ignite Memories. Aside from that, I felt we’d probably struggle.

Magic can be a funny old game though. We’ve already heard from Craig about his struggles through one PT experienced team after another. Our route was considerably more charmed.

In round 1 we got Team Small Child. It looked dicey at one point as Fizz drew two of the splash cards and no Islands, but I was able to abuse Stingscourger and Dust Elemental and set up a kill with Ignite Memories when we knew the only card in their hand was Jaya Ballard.

Round 2 was against a couple of lads from Newcastle I think (apologies if I’ve got it wrong). One of the amusing things you can do at Two-Headed Giant tournaments is to run polls on which team will self-destruct into bickering first. I thought it would be either these guys or the eventual finalists Kenny and Toby. Despite the apparent arguing I think they were having fun, and they came very close to beating us after winning the die roll and coming racing out of the blocks with an Undying Rage on a Cloudchaser Kestrel.

At one point I thought our only out was to maybe go for a speculative Ignite Memories and hope, but then Fizz drew a Volcano Hellion and we were able to stabilize at a life total so perilously low we could even pay the echo on the Hellion. Yep, that’s damn low for Two-Headed Giant.

I had a tough choice when they threw in an apparently a suicidal attack that was really a cover to get four damage through with Brute Force. I had a Dawn Charm but I was reluctant to use the fog effect as we were already mashing three of their guys even though it would put us down to a bum-squeakingly low two life. I took the chance and figured I could use the counterspell part of it if they threw burn at our head (of course I’d forgotten this would only work if they threw it at my head. Fizz was totally unprotected).

With most of their guys wiped out we were able to wipe out a third of their life total with Ignite Memories then finish them off with fliers.

In round 3 we ran into Eddie and Bruno, and both have played on the Pro Tour. I felt our wheels would come off here for sure, especially after they opened with a suspended Baloth and Ephemeron. They’d both mulliganed though and after that their draws didn’t really seem to go anywhere. It was also one of those games where they never had the tricks to trump ours. Both Fiery Justice and Phthisis took out their intended targets with no resistance.

It was an important win as it meant we didn’t have to play any more games with our just-okay decks. Actually, they weren’t as bad as I first thought. While we didn’t have the really stupid stuff like Pyrohemia, we had some nice solid cards, especially the fliers, and the decks worked well in tandem.

While we could take it easy and grab drinks from the bar the tournament was getting interesting. There were two teams on ten points after we IDed round 4, but there were three teams on nine points. Kenny and Toby stubbornly refused to lose after getting paired down twice, which meant one of the ten-pointers was going to lose out.

After Craig’s rant article on Wednesday, we know which team that was. The deficiencies of Two-Headed Giant as a format once again became apparent, as they basically lost out on the opportunity to draft in the top 4 simply because they’d registered after Tony Williams and Paul Murphy.

That’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny. [No it’s not. — Craig.]

Some have suggested they could have played a play-off, but Nick has already seen that situation after a TO rang him to ask what to do after the playoff match ended in a draw!

Now it was time for the draft, and this is something I haven’t really got right yet. I suppose I’ve had enough practise though.

One of the tips from Amsterdam was to draft everything but White. Personally I’m scared of Black, and running Swamps in particular, but I didn’t want that to close me off if good removal presented itself.

The other comment from Amsterdam is that you’re not really drafting decks but picking up another sealed pool. For that reason you just take the best two cards and then see what you have at the end. From six boosters there is no shortage of playables, so you can even afford yourself the luxury of having a few wasted picks if a color doesn’t pan out.

I started out with that plan, taking Ixidron and Empty the Warrens. I don’t know when the sliver theme slipped in. I think we got a Might Sliver either midway through the first pack or early in the second. At that point I started keeping an eye out for the little alien dudes.

Actually, the card I was using to test the waters was Spinneret Sliver, or rather “Signal Sliver” as I like to call him.

Unlike normal draft where Spinneret Sliver is an acceptable bear, in Two-Headed Giant Spinneret Sliver is actually pretty bad unless you are running slivers. First off he’s a bear, never the best in this slow format, but even worse he might accidentally do bad things like give their Synchronous Sliver or Spitting Sliver a way of blocking fliers that might otherwise sneak through. This makes him very good for signalling whether the sliver strategy is open or not.

Think of it as a mark and release program. You send little Signal Sliver out into the big bad world. If he comes back then the green light is on for slivers.

And the green light was on. Oh boy, was the green light on! Just take a look at the two decks we ended up with.

2HG PTQ Draft Deck A

Craig Jones

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (19)

Lands (17)

Spells (4)

2HG PTQ Draft Deck B

Faieza Saleem

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (14)

Lands (18)

9 Swamp
9 Mountain

Spells (8)

That’s a lot of slivers… 22 to be precise. We even left a couple in the board.

And I have Wild Pair, which is absolutely…. well, you’ll find out in a minute.

As for the rest of the pool…

1 Feldon’s Cane
1 Phyrexian Totem
1 Dormant Sliver
1 Firewake Sliver
1 Mycologist
1 Mantle of Leadership
1 Divine Congregation
1 Gaze of Justice
1 Icatian Crier
1 Plated Pegasus
1 Enduring Renewal
1 Venarian Glimmer
2 Wistful Thinking
2 Looter il-Kor
1 Think Twice
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Stormcloud Djinn
2 Cancel
1 Coral Trickster
1 Fathom Seer
1 Ixidron
2 Traitor’s Clutch
1 Skulking Knight
1 Psychotic Episode
1 Gorgon Recluse
1 Bog Serpent
1 Cyclopean Giant
1 Battering Sliver
2 Aetherflame Wall
1 Dragonstorm
1 Wheel of Fate
1 Timecrafting
1 Dust Corona
1 Thick-Skinned Goblin
1 Flamecore Elemental
1 Kavu Predator
2 Sprout

I’ve included the rest of the pool because Two-Headed Giant draft is more like assembling a Sealed deck pool to build decks from. It also shows exactly how many playables you actually get from the draft. Yep, that’s two Looter, two Cancel, a Fathom Seer, and Ixidron warming the bench. None of those cards are particularly shabby.

To be honest I wasn’t exactly sure how good our decks were. I’d tried drafting slivers with Keith, and our decks just crumbled by our opponents taking out a Bonesplitter. Leaving all those juicy Blue cards in the board just felt… wrong.

After obsessing about it for a while I’d said to Fizz, “Shall we just have fun?”

Play slivers, have a laugh. Felt like a plan. Who cares?

I had no conception of the grievous bodily harm I was about to inflict on our unsuspecting opponents. The marines were about to be ripped apart by the aliens, and Ripley was nowhere in sight.

The semi-final was against Manchester stalwarts Tony Williams and Paul “Tron” Murphy.

I was a bit short of land, but it didn’t matter as the first sliver was a Gemhide and from there the aliens kept popping out of the woodwork.

Do you know what happens when you get eight slivers in play that regenerate, don’t tap to attack, block fliers, trample, and have first strike? It’s like attacking with a Wall of Akromas.

It’s not pretty.

Fog can be devastating, but it doesn’t do much when your opponent’s monsters don’t tap to attack and you know there’s going to be another 30 points of trampling damage coming at you next turn.

Aliens 1-0 Marines.

This wasn’t even the worst. That’s still to come.

The final was against two local players Kenny and Toby. Kenny was already sick of slivers after I’d beaten him in the final of the FNM draft night the night before. Gemhides were number one on his hitlist.

Because it was the final we got to see each other’s decks (to counteract one team gaining an unfair advantage through scouting). Their decks were pretty scary. Their first picks had been Akroma and Magus of the Disk, and so one of their decks was mono-White. The other was Black/Red and had a smattering of removal as well as Avatar of Woe. I felt Kenny’s deck could cause us problems if he had removal for key slivers.

My draw was fairly average although I raced out of the gates with two Sinew Slivers, but Fizz’s draw was flat out insane. A few weeks ago I’d been helpless to prevent a couple of kids from winning Champs. They’d had the answer to everything we tried to do and had ultimately walked home with the medals. Not much you can do about that. Sometimes it’s someone’s day.

Today, it was our day.

Fizz had Phthisis in her opening hand. I decided against suspending it and it turned out to be correct, as Fizz drew enough land to cast it on turn 7. In the meantime she’d killed an Aether Membrane with Volcano Hellion, pinged away at their life total with a Pyromancer, and then brought out the big guns with a Battering Sliver.

I wasn’t doing a great deal. Kenny had been good to his word and terminated a Gemhide with extreme prejudice. He’d also knocked out one of my Sinews to leave me with just a Sinew Sliver and Wild Pair in play.

Did I say just a Wild Pair in play…?

We’d got it so late… The first inkling I’d had of this enchantment was when the coverage guys had raved about one in Canali’s deck at Geneva. It’s busted. Draft it, and draft it highly.

But anyway, back to the final, and those of you that are squeamish might want to look away now. It’s about to get ugly.

We hit our turn 7, and things get interesting. Fizz had a Battering Sliver in play and a Prodigal Pyromancer. The Pyromancer was not looking long for this world, as Kenny had just dropped a Fire Whip on an Evil-Eye of Orms-by-Gore. His team-mate, Toby, had a Thunder Totem, Cloudchaser Kestrel, D’Avenant Healer and, rather more interesting, a Magus of the Disk that had just come in tapped.

This gave me a tricky decision on what to nail with Phthisis. Kill the Magus or kill the Eye for extra damage? We took down the Eye.

Normally the target should be the Magus (and in this case it would have backfired horribly, as Toby was holding Rebuff the Wicked), but I suspected that our board position wasn’t really inviting enough for them to blow the Magus in their turn. I reckoned they’d leave him open to pop in case of emergency.

Oh, I may have neglected to mention the Sudden Spoiling in Fizz’s hand…

My suspicion about the Magus proved to be correct. We had a Battering Sliver and a Sinew Sliver. From their point of view they couldn’t really see the whole iceberg of complete badness that was about to come crashing down on them. They didn’t pop the Magus and instead added Ib Halfheart and Ivory Giant to the board.

*Warning, we are about to enter a world of pure sickness.*

In my turn I drew an Evolution Charm. By itself, this isn’t that exciting, but Rich Hagon was watching my face as I drew the card and he described it as “the look of a man who knows he’s about to do very bad things.”

The Charm enabled me to fetch an Island, for reasons that will become very important in a minute.

But first, time to do something about that irritating Magus of the Disk.

Fizz cast Sudden Spoiling, targeting Toby. Gotta love Split Second. No blowing up the world this turn for you.

Still, our board wasn’t that threatening. Just a Battering Sliver and a Sinew Sliver.

Oh, and Wild Pair…

And that Island? Cast Shadow Sliver. Shadow Sliver comes into play as a 2/2 (thanks to Sinew Sliver). Trigger Wild Pair, fetch Reflex Sliver. All slivers have Haste.

Cast Spinneret Sliver. Spinneret Sliver comes into play as a 3/3. Trigger Wild Pair, fetch Synchronous Sliver.

Not wanting to be left out Fizz cast a Basal Sliver. All of a sudden, two slivers and seven points of power had become seven slivers and twenty-two points of power.

With haste…

Unblockable…

Suffice to say, their life total was not higher than 22.

Thanks for reading.

Prof

From The Lab – How to Qualify for San Diego

Creatures (65)

Lands (6)

Spells (34)

Creatures (15)

Lands (18)

Spells (7)

Creatures (12)

Lands (18)

Spells (10)

Creatures (19)

Lands (17)

Spells (4)

Creatures (14)

Lands (18)

Spells (8)